


If It's True What They Say

by neverwheredreamer (clutzycricket)



Series: Lions and Dragons and Wolves Oh My [4]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Crack Treated Seriously, F/F, M/M, Minor Character Death, Miscarriage, Politics, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-07
Updated: 2013-11-07
Packaged: 2017-12-31 18:28:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 34,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1034964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clutzycricket/pseuds/neverwheredreamer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As the dead rise and destruction looms, the Hogwarts crowd is leaving the nest and trying desperately not to crash. Good thing they have each other, then. Right?</p>
<p>(Or, how rumor, distrust, and scare tactics nearly ended the world, and smacking people over the head until they gave a straight answer saved it.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Ones Who Load The Dice (August 1979)

**Author's Note:**

> I highly recommend reading the previous stories- they're mostly drabble length and will clear up a lot.

"I was almost sorry to hear about your woman," Malfoy said, and Sirius almost said that she wasn't his woman, he was her... 

"Sorry?" Sirius choked.  He'd stopped eating when Malfoy walked over, wanting to put his silverware to a better use. (As Arya put it, he knew where to stick the pointy end and wasn't afraid to do it.)

"You nearly did well for yourself, considering your unfortunate views," Malfoy admitted as if it was a great concession.

Considering Rhaenys, "nearly did well" was missing the mark by a lot, Sirius judged. Though maybe he wasn't the best judge, being engaged to the woman in question. Though by Pureblood standards, he could point out the Targaryens were assumed to stretch back quite a bit, if you ignored the rumors of fey ancestry. The Martells were older still, if he remembered old lessons, and immigration didn’t seem to dim the claims of _some_ families. (Nor the fact that most of those same families were occasionally out and out lies.)

Hell, Rhaenys had been on his  _mother_ 's acceptable list, long ago. (Sirius had been nine. His thoughts on that were that Rhaenys was fun to play with, but girls were scary creatures. He blamed his cousins.)

"So why is this a bad thing?" he asked, warily. There was something he didn't know, obviously. 

Malfoy looked surprised. Sirius regretted the lack of good light in the pub, it made it hard to see any small details that would bite him later. "I suppose you didn't hear what happened, then?"

"Nothing happened," Sirius said. Rhaenys and Tyene were doing something in Southampton, setting up a supplier for the Potions Exchange. It was a brilliant idea, really. Rhaenys and her circle- and Lily- had organized a team of freelance potion makers who made discreet potions for the wealthy. The profits from those potions went to finance basic care for those harmed in the war. And those who couldn’t exactly go to Saint Mungo’s for treatment, without being targeted by Death Eaters or one of their sympathizers. Remus had sent a few of the contacts that Dumbledore had asked him to cultivate their way. (Even if Professor Martell had yet to finish the Wolfsbane potion, the teas that Elia used to manage her condition meant they could dodge a lot of the exhaustion and stiffness that full moon nights brought about. Remus has dryly commented that it was the most useful tool in his diplomatic arsenal.)

Rhaenys would be staying overnight at the Red Keep, since it was a full moon and she'd be making the pain-relievers for her mother and brother. It wouldn't take long, which was the only reason she agreed to take over the job from Sansa. Sansa had volunteered to start helping now, despite only being in her fifth year- she had a knack for the sort of people-details that made everyone else start looking for a parchment and quill. (Hell, she probably outdid _Margaery_ in that respect, and everyone knew Marg was the Queen of Thorn’s heir in matters political.)

"Bellatrix heard another story," Malfoy said. "She'd been expecting the Stark girl- some of her friends were still quite annoyed over that incident with Clegane, you see. I heard that she never made it to Saint Mungo’s. I assumed you were drowning your sorrows. Quite understandable."

The worst bit of it was that to Malfoy, it probably was. Whatever else you could say about him, he did love Narcissa as much as he was able. Rhaenys was pureblood, and therefore human in his eyes. Between those two facts, he might be able to dredge some condescending sympathy.

No. No. Rhaenys was fine. Tyene was with her, and the two of them were terrifying. Terrifying and not prone to losing to Bella. Or whichever Death Eater they were facing.

If it was true... well, hopefully he'd get his revenge before anyone else managed to tear them to pieces. 

He hadn't mentioned Tyene, he told himself, waiting for Malfoy to leave before tossing coins on the scarred table and apparating to the Red Keep. Rhaeny's father would be there, and hopefully Rhaenys, not knowing the story Malfoy told him because _none of it had happened_. 

~

"What do you mean she's not here?" Sirius bit back a curse as Rhaegar Targaryen blinked. The older man had come out to investigate his apparition, and had apologized as he handed Sirius back his wand. Sirius hadn’t bothered getting in the door before asking about Rhaenys.

Of course she wasn’t here.

"I assumed whatever meeting she had ran over. She said it might, and knew I would be home to watch over everything," Rhaegar said, sitting on a stone and steepling his fingers. Since it was starting to get dark, Sirius had to admit it was kind of creepy. "Should I be worried?"

"Possibly?" Sirius admitted. There was another stone- stealth gardening, maybe- but he didn’t want to sit down right now. He wanted to scream, shout, and curse someone already. "Depends on how much you value Lucius Malfoy as a source. He may have hinted that Bella planned a raid on the meeting."

Rhaenys' father had learned patience, from finding himself as the sudden host to large gatherings of teenagers if nothing else. Hell, Sirius had even stayed at Dragonstone for two days, with nothing more than a raised eyebrow. "I wouldn't value his word, I admit. Though wasn't Miss Stark supposed to go to this meeting?"

"She was," Sirius said, hoping this didn’t poison Targaryen against the younger girl. Sansa would feel guilty enough. "That was why it was planned. I’ve gotten the feeling that Rhaenys would make a good consolation prize either way, though."

Rhaegar picked up the meaning quickly. He’d probably known what had happened to Bran Stark before Sirius had. A silly little fourteen year old witch hitting Gregor Clegane in the eyes with her pretty little bluebell flames? That had damn near made Daily Prophet headlines, except _something_ had interfered with the story.  (That something probably being Catelyn Stark, who was head of the Spell Damage ward at Saint Mungo’s and a force of nature, rivaled only by her not-sister-in-law Ashara Dayne, head of the semi-official major trauma team, and Cersei Baratheon.)

"Damn," he swore, looking out the window. "I can't... I failed my wife and son," he said, turning to face Sirius with regret in his eyes. "Rhaenys never forgave me for that, not really. She shouldn't have to suffer too."

Sirius was fairly certain that she'd forgiven her father for annoying someone to the point of hiring Gregor Clegane by sixth year, when Aegon got in to Hogwarts. (Mind you, she’d come close to hating _him_ , at that point. But that was a different story.)

“We’ll find them,” Sirius shrugged. “The girls probably tied him up and decided to use him as a test subject for Tyene’s potion of the day.”

Rhaegar gave a flicker of a grin that reminded Sirius sharply of his Cheshire hellcat. “I can think of a few that she might enjoy working on, true.”

Both men pulled out their wands at the tell-tale crackle of the floo as the flames turned green, barely relaxing at Arianne’s familiar face.

“Something happened, and now Tyene and Rhaenys are at St. Mungos, please get there before the Aurors? They managed to kill someone, apparently.”

Even with the distortions caused by the floo, Arianne looked off-balance, with her words coming too quick and her eyes darting in the corners. She was sort of just sitting blankly in the fireplace.

Fuck, how badly had the girls been hurt?

“Arianne, seriously, princess priss, out of the floo,” Sirius said, tossing her a grin and ignoring her sputtered goodbyes. He’d be hiding behind Rhaenys’ robes forever after this, but he wanted to hurry, damn it, and Arianne had been too panicked to get her head out of the floo so they could get to the hospital.

~

The Spell Damage ward at Saint Mungos was quiet large, and usually overflowing in these troubled times. Ashara had found an empty room near the Nurse’s station, one that was meant to be a private room but had a second bed fitted in. Harshly lit and coldly impersonal, it was one of the new additions made in the past few years. Rhaenys was wearing a black cast on her arm, under the jacket she’d pulled over her like a shawl, and had a bruise on her face, but was otherwise unhurt. Tyene had what looked like a weal running down her throat, and a very satisfied smile.

Rhaegar watched the young man hover around his daughter, and her daughter’s amused fondness as he fired off questions and brushed her hair behind her ears. As he pulled out an apple and started to bully a too-thin Rhaenys into eating it, Rhaegar turned to a serene-looking Tyene.

“What happened?” he asked, gesturing to one of the least-damaged chairs. Lyanna was still speaking to Ashara, over at the end of the hall. She had gotten over the awkwardness, he noticed with a touch of relief. Hopefully Ashara would distract her long enough for Rhaegar to cover for whatever stunt his niece had pulled. “Tell the truth, now.”

Tyene blinked her dark blue eyes, feigning innocence. “We were attacked, and one of them managed to hit Rhaenys with a bone breaker. When I went to move her, the other hit them with Fiendfyre. The first Death Eater,” and here Tyene’s smile grew a touch colder, “managed to fire off another curse that killed the second. Clegane was wounded badly and Lestrange fled.”

Rhaegar frowned. While not entirely impossible, it was a bit unlikely. And Tyene’s smile… there was a reason Tyene was the most dangerous of the Sand Snakes.

Tyene would not allow an escape, if nothing else.

“Truly,” Tyene smiled, “I do owe Sirius some thanks.”

Sirius? Rhaegar remembered Rhaenys breezily bringing Sirius to Dragonstone the summer before Aegon went to Hogwarts, saying that there had been a disagreement with his family, and Dorea Potter was trying to smooth it over, and that Sirius was going to stay out of sight for a day or two, and Dragonstone was suitably isolated, didn’t he think? Rhaegar, knowing his daughter, neglected to point out that Orkneys were very isolated from London, yes, and was the boy _limping_? Viserys had done it for him, anyway, among other comments. (Rhaenys had put chili pepper in his oatmeal the next morning, and Rhaegar had pointed out to his infuriated- and jealous- younger brother that he _knew_ Rhaenys disliked people pointing out the cracks in her reassurances, and insulted her friends would only annoy her further.)

He also remembered the House Elves telling him of a Grim wandering the castle, and Danaerys pulling books on the Animagus transformation from the library afterwards. He brushed that aside for later.

“What form do you take?” His voice was quiet, despite the fact that Ashara was still speaking to Lyanna, safely out of hearing range. A catalogue of injuries, most likely. Rhaenys was still favoring one leg, and Sirius was scowling fiercely at anyone who came near her, wand tip just showing under his jacket sleeve.

“The Animagus transformation requires registration,” Tyene said airily, but her voice was just as soft. “A quick test, however, revealed that I _could_ , however, do it if I so wished.”

“What form would you take?” Rhaegar asked again. Lyanna was starting to look impatient.

“I would be a saw-scaled viper,” Tyene smiled up at him. “Something that could fit under one of Rhaenys’ scarves, and serve as a deterrent to a suspected trap. If something happened or someone unsavory approached…” She gave a small shrug. “Hello, Auror Stark.”

Rhaegar wondered if he should let Doran know, if he didn’t already. Lyanna gave him a sympathetic smile. “Hello, Tyene. I just need your version of the story for our records. Director Baratheon doesn’t want to come under fire for allowing murderers walk free.” She bit her lip, a gesture she’d never quite grown out of. “Well, Seaworth pointed out that if we just walked around murdering Death Eaters that there would be legal problems. Cersei agreed, so…” She flopped on the chair, profoundly exhausted. “Personally, I want to give you both a medal. Merrett Frey was a horrible excuse of a man, and he needed to be stopped. But Old Walder Frey has more than enough gold to buy off anyone short of the Director.”

“Including the Aurors?” Tyene asked, poison well hidden. Rhaegar watched as Lyanna snorted. There was the beginning of frost at her temples … she was still young.  Jon was two years younger than Rhaenys. Thirty-five, then, to his forty.

“Depends on the Auror,” Lyanna shot back, half teasing. “Next time see if you can hit that Westerling bastard, he makes me twitchy. Not the best person to have at your back.” 

“I will remember that,” Tyene’s eyes were wide and innocent. Did Lyanna know that she had signed the man’s death warrant?

Well, at the very least made Tyene curious. But one would probably lead to the other.

Rhaegar added that to the never-ending list of things he should look into, then watched his daughter shoot him a rueful look before managing to get Sirius to walk over with her.

“I’m sorry I had you worried,” Rhaenys said, “we didn’t know what was going to happen, I promise.” She didn’t look like she’d planned it- she was still favoring one leg, and there was a salve across her nose. Her knuckles were also bruised and bleeding.

“You came home,” Rhaegar pointed out. “Frankly, that’s all I care about.”

Lyanna gave them both a glare that had no actual heat behind it. “Well, let’s care about making sure neither of you end up in Azkaban, alright? Frey will be calling for your heads. And I don’t trust most of his circle to not try and make it happen. Officially or otherwise.”

Rhaegar watched his daughter mouth Arianne’s name to Tyene, causing the fairer girl to raise an eyebrow. He would have to ask about that later.

“Well, we were talking to a supplier for the potions exchange,” Rhaenys started, smoothing her very muggle jacket, which was made of dark leather and suspiciously oversized, “Which went fairly well. We got the terms we expected, if not the ones we wanted, and that can change over time. We left at… seven thirty sound right?”

Tyene tilted her head. “Yes. Give or take a few minutes, of course.” She took up the thread. “We were to head to the nearest safe apparition point, a shed at the corner of the property- being an import business, they of course have to follow the guidelines on magical transportation.”

“Running a bit late for a business meeting,” Lyanna pointed out. She was using a standard diction quill, and pretending not to notice Sirius following the words it wrote.

“They didn’t want to openly show their support,” Rhaenys pulled a strand of hair that had gotten stuck in the salve off her face with a frown. “There are too many people who dislike the Exchange and what it stands for, even if we aren’t actively campaigning for or against any position.”

Rhaegar hid a smile at that answer. Technically accurate, but with the people involved, there was never a chance of the Potions Exchange not being a tool for change. And a lightening rod of controversy. “I expect the work Tyene and her father are doing on the Wolfsbane Potion has nothing to do with that,” was his only comment.

“Well, that’s more Sarella than me, at the moment,” Tyene admitted. “With her being in Hogwarts for another year.” She looked cheerful, then. “They estimate a working formula- a properly working one, not the rubbish the Ministry is trying- by May. Belby doesn’t really care who gets credit, as long as we get it done.”

“And once we’re sure it’s safe, we start distribution,” Rhaenys mused. “Perhaps that has something to do with the timing- I can’t imagine any of that gang enjoying the idea of their victims not having to turn to them for support, not when safer options exist.”

Sirius spoke up then, “Well, they thought you were Sansa.”

Rhaenys blinked. “ _How?_ I’m not, well, Dany, but Sansa is taller, and, well… ginger.” She gave a wave that took in her braid, which needed to be redone, and was decidedly not auburn.

“They thought Sansa would be handling the distribution,” Sirius answered. “She’s been doing a good bit of it, anyway, this summer, and it was the last chance they had before she went off to Hogwarts and relative safety.” He had started playing with Rhaenys’ braid, keeping a wary eye on the others in the waiting room.

“But it wasn’t sweet little Sansa they got,” Tyene smiled. “It was us.”

Sirius edged away from Tyene. Lyanna sighed. Ashara, who was supposedly out of hearing range at the Healer’s Station, gave Rhaegar a sympathetic look. 

“To be fair,” his daughter pointed out, “Jon would have gone with her. He’s not incredible about subtle, but he is a good duelist.”

“That sounds about accurate,” Lyanna said with amusement, not looking him in the eyes. Rhaenys realized she was talking to Jon’s mother, and winced.

“Sorry. Can we blame the concussion for that? Please?” she pleaded. Lyanna laughed.

“No need,” the auror reassured her.

“Anyway,” Rhaenys continued, looking wan under the hospital lights, “they were waiting for us at the Apparation Point. Edwyn Frey, Raff Sweetling, Bellatrix Lestrange, and the younger Clegane brother, who was beginning to change. I blasted him in the door of the shed, sealed the doors, and hit the windows with unbreakable charms. That took maybe fifteen seconds.”

Three charms, undoubtedly silent? Rhaegar smiled to himself for a moment, ignoring Sirius’ unhappy look at the mention of his cousin.

“Tyene hit Raff with a bone breaker in the leg, first,” she added, brow furrowed. “Then Bellatrix attempted a crucatious curse- she is rather obsessed with those, isn’t she?” She looked up at Sirius with concern.

“She goes between that and obscure or new curses,” Sirius admitted, tugging again at her hair. “Usually she sticks with crucatius if she has time, though. She likes making an art out of it.” There was something sour, and Rhaegar remembered a limping boy who had moved slowly, and Rhaenys rushing out of a party at Storm’s End as if hell itself was chasing her.

“Right. She missed, though, taking out a chunk of grass. Then she did hit me, with the bone breaker. She was about to try for the crucatius again when Sweetling lashed out with Fiendfyre, and it nearly hit her. It did hit Frey, who’d been trying to nail Tyene with various curses I was too distracted to hear.”

But he couldn’t because Tyene was a snake at the time, harder to hit.  Probably striking in the leg, something disguisable with a well-aimed bone-breaker and a quick jet of Fiendfyre with a dead man’s wand.

“Frey managed a spell I didn’t know, one that made Sweetling start to bleed out everywhere,” Rhaenys added, looking drawn. Another spell with a dead man’s wand, perhaps? “Bellatrix left, and we came here.” She looked at Lyanna, eyes wide. “Are the Westerlings alright?”

“Yeah,” Lyanna assured her with a hint of a grimace. “There was a silencing charm in place, as well as a few others to hide what they intended on doing, which means they had no intention of killing them as well. Sybell Westerling told me that the contract is no longer in place, though.”

Rhaenys nodded. “I kind of expected that. The Manderlys have been making their interests known, though, and that would probably be a better choice.”

“Better ethics, at least,” Tyene mused. “Most likely better hospitality as well.”

The sound of skidding feet made a series of wands aim behind them, and Rhaegar watched as his professional life intruded into personal business, this time in the form of Daeron Singer.

“Sir? I’m sorry, but Allister Thorne told me he needed you to come in right away,” the boy said. “’lo, oh belle dame sans merci,” he added, bowing. His French was atrocious, but Tyene accepted the greeting with a nod. “Wonderous flower of bookthrowing.”

“Once,” Rhaenys grumped. “Once, and no one lets me forget it.”

Sirius chuckled. “You threw the complete works of Sherlock Holmes at Avery’s head, love. It left a dent.”

“Well, nothing lighter would have,” Daeron grinned. The boy was only two years older than Rhaenys, charming and utterly feckless. He was clever with his stories, though, and a half-blood with no love for the Death Eaters. (And one day someone would notice that Rhaegar and the Old Bear made sure that the Unspeakables had a remarkably low rate of purebloods for a Ministry department. They put up with Rookwood because they knew his loyalties, and Thorne because he didn’t yet betray a Mystery.) “But there’s been a problem, sir, and you’re needed.”

“Go on,” Rhaenys said to him, eyes a bit mischievous. “Before it wanders loose and tries to attach itself to another Ministry big-wig.”

Rhaegar sighed- he had nothing to do with that project, but Walder Frey refused to believe that. (Though the tentacles did have fascinating properties.) “I’ll be home as soon as possible.”

Elia and Egg were safely locked away in Dragonstone tonight, at least, with Dany staying with her friend Doreah and Viserys… most likely getting drunk in a muggle pub again. (He’d have to have a talk with him one day. Again.)

~

Davos wanted to go get very, very drunk. Or, better yet, go home and sit in the kitchen, watching Marya at work, the children getting underfoot.

The Department of Mysteries was a miserable, confusing place at the best of times. The doors were a pain in the arse, not bearing labels or even permanence. And if you marked a door, you would have the Unspeakables breathing down your necks and giving you baleful looks for weeks. Not to mention some of the experiments, which seemed like they were pushing human understanding in ways it wasn’t meant to go.

The people were a mixed bag. Rhaegar Targaryen wasn’t a bad sort, once you got past the fact that he looked like something out of a book of fairy tales. (Muggle ones, of the sort he’d seen in primary school, and Wizarding- though _that_ might have been a picture of an ancestor.)  Easily distracted, but he never looked down on Davos from coming from a nonmagical slum in Manchester, and didn’t mind explaining things in simple terms.

Melisandre… the Red Witch terrified him and infuriated him. The eerie red eyes he could explain with charms and the normal sort of daftness that came with professional seers. Her sense of conviction was also, Stannis said dryly, another thing that seers often had, usually when they were wrong. She had no idea of consequences, really, any more than Stannis’ brothers did.

“What happened? And this time don’t include magical theory,” Davos added, before Rhaegar started.

The man gave a flicker of a smile. “Well, then, there was an experiment being run in the Lake District. Nothing out of the ordinary, really, just a routine check after an incident a long time ago.”

“One that could return and spell our doom,” Melisandre interrupted. “The signs have been falling upon us like a tide of darkness…”

“Or the fall of night,” Rhaegar murmured, as if something in particular was on his mind. “There was evidence that alarmed us, so Waymar Royce was sent to ensure that one of the three sites were still safe. There is an island there, one that isn’t inhabited in the usual sense of the word, not far from Harrenhal.”

This, Davos knew, made the situation worse. Harrenhal was cursed, haunted, and every other miserable thing that a wizard could think of. The former Wizarding community had been burned out during the withdrawal from the muggle world, though small communities still lived there from time to time, determined to reclaim their home. The Whents were the last to try and claim it, with the widow the only one left, with some scattered folks too poor or too stubborn to move.

“They were consumed,” Melisandre continued, and if Davos wasn’t so used to the bloody seer and her attitude he would have thought it was an illegal breeding farm on the island.

“So Benjen Stark went on broomback, with a modified camera,” Rhaegar flicked at his cuffs before he spoke again. “This is what he found.” He turned to one of the cabinets in his office, tapping it with his wand and pulling out a bundle. The wood was vibrating from the spells on it as Rhaegar shut it again, and Davos pretended that he had not noticed how very deep the shadows in the cabinet were.

Silk, Davos thought, undyed but covered in runes. What on earth needs that much protection?

Then he saw the photos. Stark had gone closer than he probably should have, showing the blue tinge to the limbs. They weren’t moving, which meant that Stark had either developed them the muggle way or the wind had been still as he hovered over the forested island.

“Is this a pattern? A rune or something?” Runes had been languages once, little Shireen Baratheon had told him, used by muggles and wizards alike. Some people insisted that writing them made very strong spells, but Davos doubted it.

“It looks similar, yes, to some of the older languages, but it doesn’t quite match any we know of,” Rhaegar admitted. He looked exhausted. “I want to send it over to Yohn Royce, but I also don’t want him charging out there for revenge. He’s an expert on runes. Crouch might also do.” The last was said sourly, and Davos gave a grunt of agreement.

Crouch was a git and terrifying, without the least concept of mercy. All ambition and no common sense, and having too much power. Stannis was torn on his latest proposal, a private court with a judge, two aurors sworn as witnesses, and veritaserum. It would hopefully reduce the rate of bribery and other methods of twisting the justice system. It also had its own sins, considering how conviction-mad Crouch was. But it would go through, after the next big attack.

“Aemon Targaryen might know,” Rhaegar added, “as he has made a study of this sort of thing, but he’s also older than Dumbledore and cannot be woken up at five in the morning.”

“What did this?” The cuts were cleaner than most curses, with a blackened tinge to the edges of the flesh.

“There are stories,” Rhaegar said after a moment. “Of a race who no one ever named, afraid that naming them would call them. Rather like Voldemort.”

The Others. Davos had read it to his sons, the stories of the Longest Night that had been ended with fire and pain before the coming of the Romans.

“What are the odds of this spreading?” Davos asked. “Will they leave the island?”

“For certain,” Melisandre said with a bald graveness that had none of her usual theatrics. She looked small and a little shabby. “Harrenhal will be overtaken soon enough, and if the Heir of Slytherin forges an alliance with the darkness…”

Davos fought down a colorful fit of swearing at that. Also a strong urge to send his children and wife somewhere far away. Australia might do.”How likely is _that_?”

“We have no idea,” Rhaegar admitted. “But he has the dementors, last we heard, and everyone thought that was impossible, as well.”

“What are you doing next?” he asked.

“Working to identify the shape that Stark photographed is paramount,” Melisandre said. “To know the message of this enemy is to know their motives.”

“And knowing why means that you can know what next,” Davos frowned. “Would it be possible to evacuate Harrenhal?”

“We do that and people will wonder why,” Rhaegar frowned. “We’ll send three-person teams to survey the area every dusk and dawn, but we should try and prevent panic for as long as possible.”

Davos remembered the barely-leashed anger and fear when the dementors had defected, a sullen thing that still could be found after an attack. If the Others were known to be walking the land…

“What woke them up?” he asked. “It’s been nearly two thousand years, at least. Why now?”

Judging by the looks he was getting, neither Unspeakable knew.

~

“Long night, Auror Stark?” Jaime teased his partner. Lyanna gave him a glare undermined by the shadows under her eyes.

“I was up until two in the morning filling out paperwork, Lannister. How the hell do you never pull St. Mungo’s duty?” she asked with no heat. She’d caught on to his plan long ago, and for all of their griping, each thought they had the better end of the deal.

“I get called to extra Wizenmagot duty,” Jaime said. “Better hours.” Cersei had pleaded with him, and it was easy enough to deal with the paperwork he had to file.

Made it easier to keep track of a sizeable portion of the wizards and witches he wanted to arrest, too, though he wasn’t stupid enough to tell that to Cersei twice. “Are you ready to meet the fresh meat?”

“It’s not funny when Whent says it, it’s not funny when you say it,” Lyanna said, wand twitching. As her stinging hex seemed to be unduly attracted to his ass, he kept quiet.

They went through the wooden doors to where the six trainees were waiting.

Damn, Jaime thought as he saw Moody and Arthur Dayne talking to Garlan Tyrell. Tyrion said that he was good, and Tyrion had reason to know. The young man was quiet, tall, and practiced dueling against three wizards at once, his younger brother had said.

Edmure Tully was earnestly talking to Jason Mallister, who looked amused. Domeric Bolton was watching carefully, looking a bit confused.

“Tully scored horribly in stealth, but apparently he has the ability to throw off the Imperius,” Lyanna said in an undertone. “Cat was very proud of him.”

“Does he have a mind to control?” Jaime asked, edging into being almost loud enough for other people to hear.

It was a very strong stinging hex.

James Potter was talking to Ned Stark and Robert Baratheon, who looked a bit too amused. No luck there.

Kinglsey Shaklebolt was already taken, as was Marlene McKinnon.

An ungainly looking blonde was all that was left, watching the crowd with shoulders hunched like it would make her take up less room.

Lyanna grinned. “ _Yes_!” She punched the air and damn near skipped over. Jaime followed, wondering what he was missing.

“Renly told you to wait for us?” his clearly mad partner asked the wench, who nodded.

“Right. Perfect. Jaime Lannister, this is Brienne Tarth, whose combat scores set a record of… whenever you took your training,” Lyanna said, as if she wasn’t only three years younger than him. “Which means more actual response calls than statement taking.” Her look was still triumphant.

Brienne looked between them curiously. “Should Renly have warned me you were mad?”

Lyanna rolled her eyes. “No, just ordered to take a trainee, and driven mad by shifts that seem to be made to drive us to quit. We’re a bit of a scandal and a hissing.” Despite her smirk, she had the quietly furious look in her eyes that normally meant they got to plan a secretive revenge and embarrassing that was not allowed to be called a prank. (“We’re adults, Jaime. _Parents_. Parents do not prank.”)

“Which one of us is the scandal, and which the hissing?” Jaime asked curiously. Lyanna ignored him.

Clearly, she was the scandal. He was the hissing.

“So, you have all of your gear?” Lyanna asked.

“They said they had to make the robes,” Brienne said. “That they didn’t have any in my size.”

Jaime thought about that for half a moment before deciding it was a lie. Brienne was tall, yes, absurdly so. But bigger that anyone else here? That was doubtful. 

Lyanna agreed, from the set line of her lips and the way she tapped her wand on her hip. “Robert is larger than you, as is the Greatjon. Yohn Royce is taller, if I remember. _They_ have no problems getting robes, and the damn things are unisex.”

Brienne sent a doubtful look over Lyanna’s excuse for robes, which were the armoured red of the Aurors, tailored to fit her form. Not that Lyanna was dainty- she was slightly tall for a woman, and had the light muscle of a semi-professional flyer. As such, the padded top was close, while the split skirts of the robes were cut to allow her to steer with her knees.

“I’ve been taking flyover assignments out of sheer boredom,” Lyanna explained. “I needed something more maneuverable to fly in.” She tucked a lock of dark hair behind her ears, scowling. “The Department of Mysteries is taking advantage of what they consider trustworthy aurors.”

“I’m not trustworthy,” Jaime said with a hint of amusement. “Due to my father’s unfortunate political beliefs and my habit of cursing people in the back.”

“Stannis cleared you,” Lyanna pointed out. “I’m only trustworthy because I have blood ties to the Department.”

Jaime pretended he didn’t remember the smell of wet steel and wildfire. “He cleared me because he had no choice.” One of the conspirators had talked, and the Ministry had been buzzing over the plot to set London ablaze. It probably wouldn’t have even come to that if Jaime hadn’t cursed the man so he fell in front of a muggle train.

“Why wouldn’t they trust you, ma’am?” the wench asked with perfect innocence.

Lyanna scrunched up her nose. “Because far too many people have an interest in bloodlines.”

She still looked confused, so Lyanna added. “You know my son Jon?”

Brienne’s eyes lit at that, in understanding or because of the boy’s annoying knack for making friends Jaime really didn’t care. “Yes. He’s good at Defense, and worked on the amateur dueling circuit Renly set up.”

To prevent the tensions from breaking out into warfare, from what Jaime heard.  Duels were breaking out in the hallway, and Dumbledore was trying to prevent students from feeling alienated from the school and existing structure entirely. Renly Baratheon had Robert’s knack for setting people at ease, and had used it to create a dueling club, because he was vain about his skills.

Tywin Lannister could tell Dumbledore how well that sort of plan went.

“I have, over the past I do not wish to admit years…” Lyanna started.

“Sixteenish?” Jaime mused, managing to duck Lyanna’s hex. “He’s a few years younger than Tyrion.”

Lyanna gave him a Look, then continued, “I have refused to reveal the name of Jon’s father. He has plenty of good male role models who take an interest in his life, he doesn’t need another.”

Brandon Stark, a positive role model? He’d have to tell Cersei next time she needed a laugh.

“So we’ll go and yell at… Red Ronnet, isn’t it?” Jaime said after a moment. “Get him to give you your uniforms, and then go talk to Stannis about assignments.”

Brienne’s chin went up, strikingly blue eyes meeting his. “You don’t have to.”

“Jaime is good at cutting down bullshit,” Lyanna said absently. “I don’t always approve of his methods, but the quicker this is done, the quicker we can get to work.” Her grey eyes narrowed. “No trebuchets.”

Brienne looked confused as Jaime laughed.


	2. Brilliant and Cold (November 1979-January 1980)

“A motorcycle?”

Rhaenys sounded amused, and Sirius spun around. The young woman was wearing an absurdly soft grey sweater that he’d known her to own forever and a pair of black pants she’d patched with bright red bits of heavy fabric. She’d managed to walk through the grass without stumbling on any other the mechanical bits they were studying. She looked like a modern fairy wandering the nearly winter shore, hair tumbling to her knees and lips a bit too red for comfort. (Arianne had given her the damn lipstick, and she wore it when she was nervous. Something about a lady’s armor, that was all he knew.)

“It’s legal. Mostly. Mostly legal,” James said, pushing up his glasses. “We’re mostly experimenting with the petrol tank.”

And by the raised eyebrow, the Ravenclaw he was mad enough to live with caught James’ silent ‘for now’.

“Of course. Dreadfully inconvenient, fuel. Prone to running out at horrible times, from what I’ve heard,” she said. She held up the Daily Prophet. “Have you read this, yet?”

“I wanted to save the soul-crushing despair for after I managed the impossible, thanks.” Sirius stretched, working out a burning feeling in his shoulders.

She nodded before flopping on the grass. “Soul-crushing hits the description pretty well- the Darrys were raided last night. Clegane sent men to do it.” Her smile was vicious. “Apparently Sansa’s cursework from two years ago is still ailing him.”

“Yes, well, burning someone’s eyes tends to do that,” James reflected.

“And the Braxes,” she added. “Andros Brax- the one who handled underage magic cases? He accidentally taught Willas how to get ‘round most of the detection spells. Mostly from overhearing the trouble others go into, but still. Two of the sons- and his brother. All three involved in the DMLE.”

“Any survivors?” Sirius asked. He’d met Brax and his sons- the eldest had been suggested as a match for Andromeda, before she’d run away. He’d been a staunch traditionalist, but more out of habit than actual malice.

“His youngest son and wife were visiting her family,” Rhaenys said after a moment. “At the Twins. She’s Walder Frey’s eldest daughter.”

“And he now inherits everything?” Sirius asked dubiously. Murdering a very elderly relative, he had been taught, was almost acceptable if you didn’t get caught. Murdering and disowning relatives that didn’t agree with you about who qualified as human was a Black Family Tradition, right along with chopping off House Elf heads and everything else.

Arranging for your line to risk extinction for money? Was generally not regarded as acceptable.

“Wonder if one of her brothers arranged it?” she mused. “The Freys have supporters on both sides of the fence.” She rubbed her leg, which Sirius _knew_ was healed from Edwyn Frey and friends’ attack. That didn’t mean that the memory of her face lined with pain and leg oozing would go away soon.

“Why not assume Walder Frey did it?” Sirius asked.

“Because that would assume he sees women as something other than things he can fuck?” Rhaenys asked, voice even and light. But her lip twitched a bit, and something in the set of her eyebrows suggested amusment.

James turned his laugh into a cough.

Sirius shrugged. “Raises prestige, though, doesn’t it? And that’s all he gives a damn about.”

James nodded. “Look at the girls who tried to flirt with Padfoot.”

Sirius blinked. “I don’t remember that.” He didn’t either- girls being a bit annoying, yes, because asking questions about class was fine, but asking when he was trying to lay the groundwork for pranks was irritating.

Rhaenys gave a wicked grin. “Yes, that’s because you were too busy showing off to see the effect you had on people.”

“Anyway, most of them stopped after Rhaenys beat Brienne in the dueling club,” James added. “It wasn’t exactly a proper fight…”

“The words proper and fight should never go together,” Rhaenys said wryly, sitting herself in the grass just outside the debris field. “And Brienne is too sweet and honorable for her own good.” She looked at the sea, a faint scowl on her face.

“What’s wrong?” Sirius asked.

“Madam Whent has officially gone missing, and Harrenhall is supposedly deserted,” she said after a moment.

“Well, it’s cursed, isn’t it? With the war on, no one wants to be in a target and cursed, do they?” James said, tapping the tailpipe with his wand. It glowed a cold blue for a moment before vanishing.

Rhaenys shook her head. “While you have a point… something is just bothering me about it. Not quite sure what, though.”

Something was bothering Sirius about that as well, too. There were stories about Harrenhal, and most stories, no matter how mad, had something real in them.

~

Harrenhal in winter was grey and gloomy.

Harrenhal in summer was also grey and gloomy, but winter gave it that extra air of menace, with cold winds that bit and whistled between buildings and the threat of early night.

“This isn’t half creepy,” Lyanna said, opening one cottage door. She flicked her wand, sending three bright white lights to illuminate the main entrance, spilling into the living area.

There was a pair of boy’s dress shoes, shiny and still new. The boy who lived here- Jaime saw the portrait on the wall, a couple and their son- must have been breaking them in for the holidays.

Tommen and Robin both did that, he remembered, Lysa laughing as they followed Myrcella’s tap dancing instructions. He had a photo of that somewhere.

Brienne’s lumos charm lingered on the shoes, the white light seeming cold and stark. “How are they planning on telling people what happened?”

“They aren’t,” Daeron Singer said shortly. The normally cheerful unspeakable had greeted them with a curt phrase and a map of the area they needed to clear.

“Can you imagine the panic it would cause? There are people calling for evacuation or forced adoptions of muggleborns already,” Jaime added. Cersei had been furious, green eyes seeming to flash in her mood. “If this was told…”

Between murder and flight, there was a decline in Hogwarts attendance already. He’d heard rants from Tyrion and Cersei both on the subject. Lysa had spoken of sending the boys to Beauxbatons, which had made both stomp their feet and plead to stay with their friends.

“If the Department had done the responsible thing, this wouldn’t have happened,” Lyanna snapped, fists hidden by the ends of her sleeves. “They’ve known for months this _could_ happen.”

Jaime chose to enter the kitchen. The family, whoever they had been, had been in the middle of making dinner. There was a turkey in solid fat, and congealed potatoes and butter. There were shards of metal and a stone handle on the tiled floor, and a spray of blood.

“And we hoped it could be contained,” Singer snapped. “That was what the damn patrols were for. How did those fail?”

Lyanna opened her mouth before her eyes sharpened and her head tilted slightly up the stairs. “Brienne?”

“Auror Stark?” Brienne was holding her wand steady, casting a pattern on the wall, showing the hint of legs in shadow. Jaime raised his wand.

“Fire spells,” Daeron said quietly. “Burn the bones, if you value our lives.”

Jaime decided that the white of the corpse had to be a trick of the light. He’d seen bodies that had been left to rot for days. He’d seen inferi. Neither hit the shade of blue-white this had. The eyes were a sharp blue, cold and glowing like a spell.

“Fiendfyre,” Lyanna said swiftly, hitting the dead woman with a spell Jaime hated. The roar of the flames, like the shapes in the curse…

It lasted a few minutes before Lyanna let up.

The wight hadn’t screamed, and Jaime had been so distracted by the contortions that she had been making and the wolves and chimeras that he hadn’t noticed the slide of metal and the long, pale form behind him.

Brienne had, lashing out with the bluebell flames that were taught to seemingly every girl at Hogwarts, hitting it in the sword arm. It steamed a bit, but otherwise had no effect on the reflective, mirror-like armor.

Jaime turned enough to use a narrow fire spell, aiming for the complicated knee portions of the armor.

This made it scream, a high thin cry that seemed to pierce their eardrums and wanted to make them suffer.

Jaime grinned and lashed out again, wrapping the fire around the creature’s throat and watching it scream more.

It dropped the sword, a crystal-like thing as delicate and spindly as the armor. Hoping that dragonhide gloves were enough to prevent any damage, he scooped it up.

He’d been taught to use a sword from a young age, when Cersei had been taking rhetoric lessons. Part of it was family tradition- it didn’t matter if wands were more efficient, swords were more imposing, and killed what some spells couldn’t.

Part of it was his father’s ambition on getting a Valaryian steel blade in Lannister hands. After Brightroar had vanished in the company of some roving wizard years ago, all they had left was the display case.

Jaime had been very good with the sword. And the dragonhide protected him from the waves of cold the creature was giving off.

The sword cut through the crystalline armor, through flesh and bone, taking off the creature’s arm at the elbow.

The wound didn’t bleed, much. There was a sluggish flow of ichor, sizzling on the stiff red robes.

It was still standing, head tilted as if studying them.

“Well, fuck,” Jaime said as Daeron apparated away. “Ideas?”

Lyanna closed her eyes and flicked her wand, a silver wolf harrying the creature. Summoning thoughts of golden curls and wildfire eyes, Jaime’s lion flanked it, the armour making shrieking sounds whenever a Patronous got too close. Brienne was aiming her wand up the stairs, where there were more footsteps.

Eventually the armor cracked, and Jaime had a moment’s glimpse of dead-white skin and shocking blue eyes before the creature started melting.

_“Accio!”_

Nothing happened for one wild moment, except the creature making a lightening quick move that seized the blade and twisted.

The ice seemed to shatter and reform, leaving Jaime with a broken stump of a blade and the creature with a blade that was shorter and less elegant, with a jagged barb tipping it.

How dangerous could something missing half a thigh, and arm, and a foot be?

Then there was a blade coming down, and Jaime’s wand was on the floor, fingers still locked around it.

His patronus vanished, the lion seeming to give a mournful cry.

~

“Come on, stupid,” came a familiar cry. Danaerys sighed and wondered if she should interfere. Arya was willful and proud, and someone had taught her magic well above her year.

One day she would strangle Jon. Or perhaps curse him, turn him into something that wouldn’t teach Arya new ways of “defending herself”.

She walked slowly into the large empty classroom that Renly and his lot had turned into a private sanctuary, seven years ago. Various people had put their own stamp on it- Dany had asked the house elves for cushions to sit on, Tyrion and Sarella had gathered most of the spare books on the shelves Willas had transfigured. Jeyne Westerling had found the curtains, slightly motheaten and most likely red at one point, they had faded to a dusty pink and blocked out the windows, as well as making a small private chamber for someone who could not stay in their dormitory. (Roslin had spent the past few nights in there, after having a fight with some of her relatives. Sirius had spent a week in there two years ago.)

Someone had taken ruined scraps of parchment and stuck them to the stone wall- probably Sam, who was looking up from his homework every few seconds.

There were scorch marks on the wall. Arya, Egg, Shireen, and Ned Dayne- most of the Little Crowd- were standing in the perfect position to have caused them.

“What is going on?” she asked. There was Gendry and Myrcella, a pile of potions texts around them. Bran was perched on one of the bookcases, a book in hand. Meera and the Lannister boys were nowhere to be found. Sansa was reading her charms book, a slightly miserable expression on her face.

“We’re practicing fire spells,” Shireen said gravely. She looked at the scorch marks guiltily. “Father said we should learn, and so did Jon’s mother.”

“Did they say why?” she asked. She wasn’t entirely certain they should be doing this- it was probably against a few dozen school rules.

But Stannis Baratheon was a stickler for the rules, and she had no doubt he told his daughter to practice dangerous spells for a reason.

“Something about an Auror mission gone wrong,” Sansa said, looking up. The Ravenclaw had circles under her eyes, and her bright curls were drooping out of their bun. Someone had left a tray of lemon cakes near the older girl, but they looked untouched. “Mum wouldn’t say, but there were six aurors in the hospital.” She bit her lip, and Dany waited patiently.

Arya looked between the older girls. “What happened, Sansa?” Her hands were on her hips, wand sticking out. Something about it made Sansa shake her head and laugh.

“It’s probably nothing, but Rhaenys sent me an odd letter through Elia,” Sansa said finally. “Sirius was there- apparently James Potter managed to do some stupid stunt and broke his leg- and he said Jaime Lannister lost his hand. And someone- he wasn’t sure- was talking about monsters.”

“He did,” Myrcella frowned. “Mother told me in a letter that he was badly injured, but she didn’t say why. Which is odd- she always tells me stories about Uncle Jaime, since I want to be an Auror.”

“Maybe it was Dementors?” Gendry started- then shook his head. “No…”

“They wouldn’t take his hand, just his soul, stupid” Arya snapped. Myrcella turned white, the third-year looking like she was trying not to imagine her favorite uncle being Kissed.

Sansa sighed. “Arya, apologize to Myrcella.”

Arya’s expression turned mulish and stricken at once, which was par for the course when she said something rash when Sansa was around. “Sorry, ‘cella.”

“It’s alright,” Myrcella said unconvincingly. “Arya has a point, and it wasn’t Dementors that did it- besides, if we’re right and it had something to do with Father insisting on us learning fire spells, then it can’t be. Dementors are only driven away by the patronus charm.”

Dany wondered how long it would be before the study room was filled with silvery wisps. She knew how to cast a weak patronus, because Rhaegar insisted. Rhaenys could do it, and Dany had teased her endlessly over the hound form it took.

Gendry thought this over. “Because fire spells don’t work through the effect dementors have on you?” The boy, who had already picked up the nickname of “Bull”, was clearly trying to get at something.

Egg nodded. “A lot of the stronger ones need you to concentrate on them until you finish dispelling all the flames. If you don’t, they get out of control or fizzle out.” Dany and Egg had spent all their lives knowing that there were two sections of charred ruins he was never to go near- the old Summerhall cottage and the Alchemy lab Dany’s father had destroyed.

“What about muggle weapons? My grandda was talking about some of the weapons he tested in the army- grenades, flamethrowers and stuff. Could be worth a shot,” he shrugged. “You need to aim, not focus.”

Dany thought about this. “I’ll mention it to my brother, perhaps. I don’t think that the Ministry would be happy to lose their feared guards of Azkaban, but I do not think...”

“They can’t be trusted,” Sarella said, entering the study room. Her not-niece was watching the world with her usual detached amusement, gaze aimed at the top of the bookshelf. “I quite agree. Brandon, don’t you?”

Bran jerked at that, glaring at Sarella. “Don’t _do_ that.”

Sarella waited patiently. Dany was almost certain that she only did it because so many of her sisters were loud, and the silence was unnerving by contrast.

“No,” Bran said. “They eat souls, and they stay on Azkaban because they get food brought to them. If they decide they want more…” The boy frowned. “Has it happened before?”

“Sam will know,” Arya said, bounding out the door. Ned followed, looking ruffled and slightly scorched about the sleeves. He was probably hoping that he could keep Arya from shouting her question in front of a crowd. The Ministry had grown fearful of late, and prone to seeing rebellion everywhere.

Well, Dany thought wryly, they really did bring it upon themselves. They helped create the circumstances that brought the Death Eaters and their so-called Lord to power, and were doing very little of use while their people grew frightened and restless.

“This is going to end horribly, and I claim no responsibility for it,” Sansa said as they looked at each other.

Egg snorted.

~

Tyrion reminded himself that he did not want to go to Azkaban. He was far too fond of his comforts, and he was far too fond of Tysha to leave her unprotected.

(Though Willas was a good lad, and would make sure that the Lannister paterfamilias would not kill his younger son’s not-yet-fiancee.)

“Jaime wants you to come,” he told his sister again. Cersei had seen Jaime once while he was unconscious, seen the stump, and promptly walked off.

While it wasn’t entirely unexpected, Jaime actually _enjoyed_ Cersei’s company. After spending so many years as the only person Cersei could stand (who hadn’t come from between her legs), he was having trouble adjusting.  And Tyrion was hoping he could help his big brother in this.

Clearly, he had managed to underestimate Cersei’s cold-bloodedness. Again.

“Father wants a show a support from all the family,” he added. He was stretching the truth- he’d said that he hoped to use this to “realign and strengthen the family interests.” Which probably meant that he wanted Jaime out of the Aurors and into politics.

Which in turn meant that he’d quietly asked Asha Greyjoy about magical prosthetics. She had, surprisingly, agreed to try and get a few good names from her extended family and friends, who tended to work in dangerous fields. She’d promised to have a list before she had to leave for Egypt and the next phase of her curse-breaking training.

“I am busy and will talk to Father later,” Cersei said, gathering up a pile of parchment. “There is a Wizenmagot proposal that is on the table, and no one is entirely sure what the fool is trying to ban.”

“May I try? I have a good deal of experience with fools with wandering wits,” Tyrion said as peaceably as he could.

Cersei tossed the top bit of parchment at it. “You can’t possibly be any worse,” she said with a scowl.

Tyrion looked at the suggestion. “He’s proposing to steal children.”

“I noticed that,” Cersei said, mouth quirked bitterly. “While I agree with some of the proposed actions, and I certainly agree with many of his ideas…” His sister looked almost human. “Could taking away a mother’s child truly be for the best?”

Tyrion raised his eyebrows. “Some would say the wizarding world does that already.” Lily hadn’t been able to see her parents’ funerals, he remembered, and Tysha…

She’d taken him to meet her parents, who had been kind and sweet and who had known so very little of the world their daughter had grown up in. It had been a very odd dinner, as a result.

“All children leave the nest,” Cersei said, not actually agreeing with Tyrion. “But while they are still infants?”

Tyrion thought about that. “They would make it seem as if the child had died?”

“A quick, clean cut,” Cersei said with bitterness. “I can see flaws in it, aside from the obvious. The integrity of the people who place the infants, not to mention the foster parents…”

“It would go badly if the little brats they fought so hard to claim all died,” Tyrion agreed. “What idiocy is Joff planning now?”

Cersei looked at him in surprise and annoyance, and Tyrion wondered why his sister refused to admit that Tyrion knew her moods at all, particularly when she was indulging in her rare bouts of self-pity. He’d learned them young, because Cersei was a fey and unpredictable bitch who was fond of curses.

And he was determined to cut this off at the knees. Cersei’s self-pity could easily turn into something more dangerous.

“I am… not content with the choices he is making,” Cersei allowed. Cersei, normally seeming to be sculpted from ivory and gold, looked wary and weary, swirling her wine absently. He actually thought he saw a hair or two out of place. “I do believe he will see the youthful folly of his ways, though, before this goes too far.”

Seven hells. If she meant what he thought she meant… seven hells, he knew Joff was a mean bastard in all senses of the phrase, but this was taking it to new levels. Joff wasn’t out of school for another year, even.

“Voldemort is not the sort to excuse youthful follies,” Tyrion pointed out. Nor would he be ignorant of the uses that he have for Stannis Baratheon’s supposed son. He’d either end up Bellatrix Lestrange’s protégé or a prominent corpse in a month.

Getting thrown out was worth it, to see the bloodless look of wrath on Cersei’s face.


	3. Phantoms and Shadows (December 1979- June 1980)

“I don’t like this,” her father said, face set. Mother called it his Auror’s Face, and she supposed he needed it, with all of the awful things happening every day.

“Neither do I,” Jaime Lannister said easily. Aunt Lyanna’s partner looked a lot like his nephew, but with sharp edges and purpose, rather than Joffrey’s wormy softness, the sort of pampered cruelty that so often went with beauty. “But we need to catch Clegane, and he _is_ angry with your daughter. Our sources say that his eyesight is still ruined from when she hit him, and he has ordered at least one attack meant for her that we know of.”

Sansa looked at Rhaenys, who didn’t flinch at the reminder, just kept her mask of politeness on. The older witch was wearing a muggle outfit, with flaring dark jeans and Sirius’ motorcycle jacket. Even her shoes blended in, dark trainers that would allow her to run.  She was glancing carefully at the shadowed alleys. It was almost sunset, and the full moon would be rising. (Bran, Aegon, and Remus were a carefully warded section of the wolfswood in Winterfell for the night, with Remus testing the Martells’ variation on Wolfsbane.)

She couldn’t think that someone was spying on them already, could she? Sansa shivered in her light blue coat, a present from Myrcella that wasn’t quite warm enough in the damp winter’s night.

“If you’re scared, Sansa, you don’t have to do it,” Rhaenys said kindly. “I’m pretty sure we can catch Clegane’s attention anyway.” She flicked a glance at Jaime, who was looking at her with his normal smug amusement. “After all, that’s why I was called for backup, wasn’t it? Giving Clegane a chance to finish his set- Elia Martell-Targaryen and both of her children? I’m amazed you didn’t call my father in, just to sweeten the pot.”

“He said he had a project to work on,” Jaime said with studied casualness. “Though I didn’t mention your involvement to him.” He shrugged. “Probably should have.”

“He won’t kill you for letting me risk my life, you know,” Rhaenys mused. “Though there are plenty of things he could do that would not, strictly speaking, kill you.”

“That would be my worry, yes,” Jamie said dryly. “Stark’s as subtle as a bludger to the head. Your father is far more… complicated.” Father looked at Jaime and merely scowled. (Silence was the better part of valor, where Lannisters were concerned. Five years at school with Tyrion had taught her that much.)

“By which you mean you’d spend whatever was left of your miserable life in a whimpering ball of fear and pain?” Rhaenys quirked a grin, looking surprisingly like Danarys before a dueling club match.

Jaime shot her a glare with no real heat, despite the fact that most references to Auror Lannister’s hand resulted in bitterness and sharp remarks. “I doubt your father is capable of that.”

Rhaenys raised her eyebrows. “Lannister? There is a reason they are called _Unspeakable_. Trust me, I’ve looked through the books in Dragonstone’s library.”

Sansa chimed in. “There are some quite fascinating spells in there. I quite wanted to examine the stories and work involved, though, as some of it seemed to be a bit dodgy. Or perhaps they were trying to keep their work from falling into the wrong hands? Some of the results were a bit messy, after all.” The library wasn’t as large as the one kept by the Hightowers or Hogwarts, of course, but it had a strange blend, with books collected by Baelor the Blessed and Brynden Bloodraven both, as well as a glass case containing the research tomes of Visenya Targaryen. Rhaenys had allowed her the run of it after the older Ravenclaw had graduated, merely warning her to avoid Viserys when he was in a mood.

Father raised his eyebrows in amusement, and Rhaenys was grinning wickedly.  Lannister was looking at her with a mixture of horror and awe last seen when Arya, Aegon, and Myrcella had made a trebuchet that fired wet-start fireworks below the guest room Tywin Lannister had been using at Storm’s End. (Tyrion had laughed himself off a chair, when he’d heard about it, and Mrs. Targaryen had gone white at the thought of Aegon so near the Old Lion.)

“Not that I would actually do anything like that outside of carefully prepared circumstances, of course,” Sansa said hurriedly. “But, academically speaking, they show the loss of specialized spells and can lead us to understand the processes and tricks to show how they were lost, and with work some of the more beneficial spells can be brought back into everyday use.”

“Yes, I can imagine quite a few of them would be useful,” Jaime said dryly. “The Aurors would love them, for starters.”

“Robert and the Hit Wizards,” her father said without thinking. As soon as he realized what he had said, the most extraordinary expression crossed his face. Father agreeing with Jaime Lannister was something like snow falling in July- rare and unlikely to last long.

Rhaenys’ tilted her head and bit her lip. “Or the Death Eaters. And given the tales of spies and turncloaks…”

“You can’t be sure of a man’s first loyalty,” Father said, words heavy. “Not with everyone looking over their shadows and torn by family.”

“Most of them already made their choices, they just use loyalty as an excuse,” Sansa said, remembering a few of her classmates.

“Mmm,” Rhaenys tugged Sansa’s braid. “Not all, though, little bird. And perhaps I should supervise your library visits from now on? I don’t want you blowing up my house!”

With that, Sansa and Rhaenys walked down the street, Father and Jaime hidden under a series of charms and shadows.

Supposedly, they were going to buy materials for the Exchange, a quick trip after inventory. The trip had been carefully mentioned to a school friend of Sansa’s, whose mother was known to be friends with Black Walder Frey. Sansa had also been reassured that no one outside of Aunt Lyanna’s team had been told about this plan, and that it was not written down anywhere.

Rhaenys kept up a cheerful stream of chatter, mostly on potions and academic questions, which allowed Sansa to worry and keep up her end of the conversation without much trouble.

But she still was hunched in Sirius’ jacket, and Sansa saw the tip of her wand peeking out from the sleeves.

They didn’t have far to go- a small alleyway, one that lead into a crossalley and various parking garages. Sansa felt the eyes on her before she heard movement, or before the arms had reached for her friend.

Sansa was pulled closer to her friend, shoes sliding a bit in the damp, and then they fell over, into the street.

Gregor Clegane, some tired, hysterical part of Sansa thought, had not had a healer see to his wounds. The scars around his eyes were ragged near the edges, and one eye was gone. Infection had set in at one point, to see the uneven line of bone, and an ear was mostly gone.

She had done that, she knew, saving Robb and Bran. She had caused a man years of pain…

…Well, what had he done to Bran? Or Mrs. Targaryen and her son, and countless others. What had his… associate done to Remus?

Sansa scowled and raised her wand. (Brienne was coming towards them, telling Clegane to stop, but it was almost full dark, and he was twitching…)

Rhaenys slashed her wand first, shielding Sansa, and the green firewhip spell pulled tightly around Clegane’s middle, digging in with a horrible smell.

“Brienne, no!” Aunt Lyanna shouted, just as Clegane’s claw-hands went for Brienne’s face in one final blow.

Brienne didn’t fall when he struck out, faster than Sansa could follow, or when a green spell from Jaime connected with Clegane and caused him to fall. Father was coming towards them now, running straight for Sansa.

She wasn’t sure if she wanted a hug or to just find a quiet place to throw up.

“Brienne?” Rhaenys asked, getting up. Her voice was as shaky as Sansa felt. “Brienne, I had him, dammit. I don’t have license to use unforgivables, and you need something tangible or one of them once it starts…”

“It wasn’t your job,” Brienne said firmly, blood dripping down her face. “We promised we would keep you safe.”

“Err, Brienne, I wanted a chance to hurt him? Jaime kind of promised me that,” Rhaenys admitted. “Mind you, he forgot to mention Sansa’s part until it was too late, but still.”

Jaime laughed at that, seeming unconcerned as he moved a witch in dirty ragged robes to the edge of the alleyway. “Bloodthirsty little thing, still. Not that I blame you. Wench, are you going to survive?”

Brienne got a mulish look on her face. “Of course I will, Lannister.”

“Lovely,” Aunt Lyanna said, looking at the rather mangled corpse of Gregor Clegane. “Then we clean up this mess first, and then you will go to Ashara Dayne’s house- she’s one of the experts on injuries of this sort, and half-transformed…” she gave Brienne a considering look.

“There’s no risk of a complete infection,” Sansa said firmly, enveloped in her father’s reassuring hug. She’s done her own research, both on her own and under Healer Dayne’s guidance. “There probably will be some side effects, but Healer Dayne can tell you more. Going sooner would be best,” she adds, not wanting to see the body any more.

But she could tell Bran that Clegane couldn’t hurt him anymore, and Rhaenys could know that the person who hurt her family was dead and gone.

Though someone had set Clegane on them fourteen years ago, between dark wizards, and as far as Sansa knew, they had never been caught.

But that was an old worry, and they had just killed Gregor Clegane with relatively light causalities, and she would go home and get yelled at by her mother for being so reckless with her life.

She would call this a victory.

~

There was a pattern in all of this, Rhaegar knew, if only he knew where to _look_. Some innocuous side remark somewhere in the world would set him off on the right trail. Something about these raids should tell him what he needed,

“Hello?”

Rhaegar reached for his wand.

~

“Mum?” Rhaenys frowned at the tarnished mirror that held her mother’s image. When Robb had found out about Sirius’ mirrors, he’d suggested making some for the various safe havens and heavily warded homes the Order used. Sirius’ home on the coast of Sussex was one of them. “What do you mean you can’t get into Dad’s study?” Sirius looked up from his notes at that. He’d expected Rhaenys to be dancing around the news of last night.

“None of the wards are working,” Elia said, her mostly-white hair pulled sloppily back. She’d spent the Full Moon in Dragonstone running, if he remembered right, in one of the deep mazes of cells. There were bruises under her eyes, and she looked almost as gaunt as her daughter, but was otherwise fine.

“Do you want me to get Nym? If we all work together we could probably crack it,” Rhaenys gave a brittle smile. “Dad probably just… worked himself too hard and fell asleep with the soundproofing wards on. Full Moon night and all that, probably wanted to sleep through all the cousins invading.”

Elia shook her head. “Maybe… he was working with Oberyn… well, you know what I mean. They had one of their little games. Could you come in now? Maybe we can sort this out before everyone descends on us.”

“Tyene volunteered to cook today,” Cheshire said wryly, a trace of satisfaction to be seen on the line of her neck and tilt of her head as her mother’s eyes widened.

“Well. Yes. I… do hurry?” Elia pleaded.

Sirius looked at Rhaenys, who was wearing what could reasonably pass as clothes, providing you didn’t notice that her shirt was a few sizes too big and flopping over her fingers. It hid the engagement ring, which was probably for the best. It was still too new to share. “I’ll get your shoes.” And a shirt. Shirtlessness would be bad.

“Such a sweet boy,” Elia said with a hint of wicked humor.

Sirius ignored this as he ducked in the closet and tossed her some boots while pulling on a mostly-clean shirt. He was happy to be a distraction right now, and most of the people he was likely to meet knew he was doing missions for Dumbledore. (And he was ignoring the voice in his head that said that this would end badly, damn it. Chesh needed support right now.)

Elia was gone by the time he’d pulled the t-shirt on and grabbed his jacket, and Rhaenys’ hand shook as she gave him a pinch of floo powder.

“The Red Keep!” she said with a flat voice, hair tangled and scraped into a tail.

They were taking a fucking vacation soon, even if it was only a day in Cornwall, Sirius swore as he stepped into the floo and stumbled out of the grate. Music, swimming, and pretty castles.

“One day you’ll get the hang of it,” Elia said kindly as he rubbed his knee. The stone floors were not very forgiving, and the fireplace had been meant to be tricky for newcomers. One of those little tricks older families used to convince others to be cowed, it meant that the fireplace had a step that it was damn near impossible to catch. (Aegon said he’d broken his arm arriving when he was six, and Sirius believed it.)

The whole room was meant to be terrifying, Rhaenys had told him, built by the first Aegon in England sometime before the Statute of Secrecy. Dragonstone was the family sanctuary, the Red Keep was the Targaryen’s flaunting their power. Bran Stark might have sung Winterfell from the stones, Storm’s End might have been built seven times, but the Targaryen’s _commanded_ the Keep and its secrets.

High and dark, the shadows were oppressive and the stones of red and black reminded visitors that they were in another’s power. “Meant for men who were not men,” Rhaenys had once said with that Cheshire grin that meant he wasn’t quite sure if she was having him on. Everyone said the Targaryens were… odd, but Merlin knew that didn’t make it true.

(No, that was father and daughter playing old songs on a stormy night, the liquid movements that were more agile than even James, Rhaenys’ odd knack for seeing through lies.)

The handprinted bench and first aid kit were Elia’s idea, he knew.

“Hopefully,” Sirius said, giving her a practiced smile that did not focus on how heavily the older woman was leaning on her cane. Merlin, she was barely _forty_.

Was Remus going to be like that?

Rhaenys scowled at her mother. “Mum, did you take the potions this morning? They don’t help if they sit on the counter, you know.” She kissed her mother’s cheek. “You ask one of the house elves to bring it here, and Sirius and I will go fetch Dad out of the study, and then we watch as Sirius gets roasted.”

“Your mum already did that, love,” Sirius pointed out. “About five years ago, and they can’t be any more terrifying.” Elia beamed at that, and Sirius waved as Rhaenys walked him out of the entrance room into the still overbearing hallway.

“Uncle Doran would tell you Mum is an angel compared to everyone who is not Trystane. Or Quentyn, I suppose, but he fell out of a tree trying to impress Dany last year, so…” she shrugged. “At least most of them are in Hogwarts right now. And you’ve survived everyone who isn’t Viserys.” She flicked her fingers as she tapped a stone with her foot, revealing a passage that took them up a floor. “This is faster.”

Sirius was very glad he’d spent the past two years working very hard at not being killed, it would have been embarrassing if he’d been winded when Rhaenys was navigating the place as easily as a cat.

“Dad’s office is near the roof in case of explosions,” Rhaenys explained. “He has a tower in Dragonstone, but he said he had work that couldn’t be moved.” She bit her lip and tucked a loose bit of hair from her eyes, opening another door. “He swore he wouldn’t do anything dangerous, it was just a joke we made…”

The office door is made out some odd black wood that Sirius saw growing the Forbidden Forest, gnarled but unvarnished.

Rhaenys tapped the knob with her wand. “Lovelace,” she intoned carefully.

Sirius looked at her. Rhaenys shrugged, which sent his shirt sliding off her shoulder and revealed her rose bra strap. She scowled at it as she rearranged the fabric, eyes firmly on anything but the still wooden door.

“Dad’s passwords are all muggle inventors or philosophers,” she explained as the door refused to open. “But he showed me this trick… I wonder if Mom doesn’t know? She doesn’t like spending time here, not after…” She ran her hands across the granite, before resting on a stone roughly at Sirius’ eye level. “The Lady at Dragonstone demands entrance.”

The door groaned open a bit, and the smell hit them.

Sirius whirled on her without thinking, hands on her bony shoulders pulled tight. “Chesh, love, you shouldn’t go in. _Please_.”

She didn’t get it yet, eyes wide in the dim light. Something in her mind, though, refused to look at the study. “Sirius, it’s just dad, he probably messed up an experiment.”

“Then let me through first.” He met her eyes and gave her a quick kiss. For luck or sorrow or some mad form of prayer, he wasn’t sure.

He actually _liked_ Mr. Targaryen, who had been absent-minded and arrogant and died thinking his daughter hated him. It would break Rhaenys if she knew that, though.

Sirius went through the door, wand hidden from Rhaenys’ sight.

The study had been nice at one point, with open wide windows overlooking a little garden and heavy wooden shutters partly closed, as if the unspeakable had been interrupted while fiddling with them. There was flexible metal over the bookshelves, and Sirius made a note to study the gap in the bookshelves. He could get his hands on a pensieve if he made an effort, and he knew Targaryen was working on something important.

He’d _fought_. Someone- possibly Elia- had told him that Rhaegar had been a madman on the dueling circuit, once upon a time, and he’d taken pieces out of his attackers as proof that his skills hadn’t faded completely.  Rodolphus was missing part of his face. And arm.

Those pieces also included organs, which explained the smell.

Rhaegar had died from a stray curse, a stupid move of fate that should never have happened. Something that nicked one of the big vessels in his leg and bled out quickly. He’d taken out two of his attackers, who were probably the only ones sent. After all, Targaryen was an _academic,_ wasn’t he?

The sound of footsteps was quickly followed by the feel of fingers digging into his arm. Once again, he was absurdly happy that Rhaenys kept them short for her music. Arianne’s charmed nails would have dug to the bone, and crime scenes shouldn’t be contaminated. Then he realized that meant that Rhaenys was _in the study_.

He pinned her arms as she went to run through the wreckage, trying to make sure she couldn’t see any more. (He remembered her expression whenever she fought with Viserys, the utter rage in every line of her body when she thought Sirius had betrayed Aegon’s secret. Rhaenys defending her family was a terrifying and probably murderous creature.) “Let me go, Sirius, he’s hurt!”

“He’s dead, Rhaenys,” Sirius said, trying for comforting. “You can’t help him now, we have to call the Aurors. Your father probably laid traps, or there might be spell damage, or an experiment that was affected. That means that this room is a hazard, so _please_ don’t let me lose you now.” He met her eyes, which turned that unearthly shade that meant she was about to cry. “I am being a selfish prick, but your safety is first. If there are so many protections your mother needed you to override it- and I do know an heir’s password, remember my family- the room needs to be cleared, and Merlin, I am _not_ telling your family I let you die stupidly, because I will join you in being dead. It’ll probably take a while, but I will.”

He’d never been _good_ at comforting. But something in that rant triggered the same half-wild laughter he’d evoked the first time he’d seen her cry, when Willas fell from his broom, and he relaxed his grip.

“Let’s go tell your mother,” Sirius said, patting her hair. “And I’ll deal with the aurors, and then I am bundling you off somewhere isolated until the funeral so you can grieve in private, I swear.”

Rhaenys straightened up at that, bumping into his chin.”Thank you.” She looked at her father. “I don’t want to leave him alone with them, but I don’t want to… this is silly, I know, but can you stay here while I find Mum?”

“I will,” Sirius said.

“Jon should know,” she said hollowly, tucking her hair behind her ears, hands shaking so much half the hair spilled back into place. “He has a right to know.”

Sirius would eventually get used to her casual habit of dropping important secrets as if he should already know them.

~

Robert Baratheon had never had a sense of timing or propriety, but Ned loved him. So Catelyn never did curse the man, not even when he rammed his way into their bedroom early Sunday morning.

“Ned! Big news, you’re needed,” he said, looking bizarrely cheerful. “Hullo, Cat, looking lovely this morning.”

“Voldemort is dead and you have decided to celebrate?” Ned asked blearily. His hair was sticking up on end, and only her disinterest in Robert’s frank comments on her breasts kept her from moving to straighten it.

“No, no, Targaryen’s dead,” Robert said, bemused. “Death Eaters got in the Red Keep- they really should overhaul their security down there.”

Cat thought with horror of her children’s friends, sweet-tempered Rhaenys and boisterous Aegon and the one with the ridiculous short hair. Edmure had told her about the aftermath of the raid on the Darry home, reeking of drink and Ned solemn in the Godswood. And the girls had just helped Lyanna and Brienne capture the elder Clegane, as well, a victory that should have been savored for a few days.  “A raid?”

“Apparently he was working on some project and the Death Eaters objected,” Robert shrugged. “No one else was there, and the building is undamaged. Stannis is adamant over the project being the cause, but he wouldn’t say was it was, curse him.”

“Whatever it is, I suspect it had something to do with whatever landed Jaime Lannister in St. Mungo’s,” Catelyn said quietly. “They had Marwyn working on him, and no one was allowed in the room until he was lucid again.”

Robert’s eyes narrowed. “And whatever hit Harranhall, I’d bet. Why else wouldn’t anyone answer questions, even that thrice damned Skeeter woman.”

“What are they hiding?” Ned asked, still sleep bleary. He’d gotten less sleep than even Sansa, staying up all night explaining things to her.

“And how long can they hide it?” Catelyn asked. Neither Ned nor Robert were the most suspicious of men, bless them, and if they noticed…

How badly would this news damage them all?

~

Tyene smiled as she handed him a newspaper a month after Rhaegar’s funeral. (And if it wasn’t for James, Remus, and Peter, he would have convinced Rhaenys that they needed to change their names and go from  musical city to musical city, just to see that look of curiosity and life in her eyes more often.)

 “Long night?” she asked sympathetically.

Sirius wisely chose not to be sarcastic. Though he did attempt to cover the love bite on his neck. (It was early morning, he was in his own home looking for edible objects. He should not need to wear a shirt, especially when the only other person who was supposed to be in the house was his fiancé, dammit.) “A bit of one, yeah. We were trying to clean up the giant attack outside Birmingham- one tried to use a car to smash us.”

Tyene gave a delicate wince. “And then you celebrated your continued existence, I presume.”

Sirius gave her a lazy grin and hoped there weren’t any needles in the paper. “I refuse to say anything. At all, really, because I do enjoy living.”

Tyene nodded. “Now, I want to see your reaction to this bit of news.”

Sirius looked at the newspaper. The headline was a death, which was unusual. It usually took something important- a higher than normal body count, or someone especially prominent- to get the death reported somewhere other than the war section, which was usually meant to minimize panic and avoid bringing the Death Eaters down on the Prophet.

This… was an important death.

“Old Walder Frey died?” Sirius said, tangling his hand in his hair and wondering if he should cut it. Maybe next time he had down time from the Order…

“Supposedly from one of the many aliments he courted,” Tyene said with a serene expression that mostly hid the razor edges in it.

It was spectacularly unconvincing.

  
“Supposedly?” Sirius asked dryly.

“Some rumors are holding it was poison,” Tyene shook her head at this show of mistrust and suspicion. “With Stevron Frey dead in the fight outside of Oxford last October, and Ryman Frey being… as he is,” Tyene quirked an eyebrow.

Sirius nodded. “Weak willed and more willing to throw his supposed weight around than throw a curse?” He pulled out a mug and teakettle before turning to the blonde. “Thirsty?”

“Do you have the blend Aunt Elia makes?” Tyene asked hopefully. Sirius pulled out Rhaenys’ tin and shook it.

“Enough, yes,” Sirius judged. “Rhaenys is going to visit Dragonstone this evening, and Elia usually has it waiting for her.”

“She keeps promising to teach me what she uses,” Tyene sighed. “She does something with it that I don’t recognize.”

“So how long before Bellatrix or one of the other Death Eaters loses their temper and puts him out of his misery?” Sirius mused. “Or Black Walder decides he wants the Twins?”

“You assume he’s taken the Mark?” Tyene asked curiously. There was no surprise there.

“He probably was approached before Stevron’s body cooled,” Sirius snorted. He’d liked Stevron Frey well enough- he was still one of the more conservative members of the Aurors, and more suited to administrative work than field duty, but he’d been honest and tried to follow the law more than some of the more disturbing Aurors.

“And Edwyn was killed by Uncle Rhaegar in his last duel,” Tyene said thoughtfully, “leaving an ailing, weak-willed man in charge of the Freys, with Black Walder as heir.”

Sirius saw the cheerful look on her face, the careful sweep of her hands to settle, folded, on his table.

“Did Walder Frey support the attack on the Red Keep?” Sirius asked with studied casualness. He wasn’t foolish enough to think that the man had the balls to actually order an attack like that. Tyene stiffened.

“Officially, he condemned his son’s actions, but he called Uncle a fool for his outspokenness, and insulted Aunt Elia quite a bit,” she admitted. “He may not have ordered it, but he’s certainly sent sons into the Death Eater ranks to keep Voldemort away.”

“How many would actively support Walder if he tried to bring the Freys openly under Voldemort’s banner?” Sirius asked, tapping the desk. Remus would know, or Peter, who kept track of information like that.

“Not too many,” Tyene allowed. “The Darry-born children most likely wouldn’t, or Genna Lannister’s brood.” She shrugged. “Nor the Rosby ones.”

“Benfrey might,” Rhaenys said, slipping into the room. “Not so much out of malice, but out of loyalty.” She shrugged. “The downside to Hufflepuffs, I suppose, showing loyalty to unworthy causes.”

She’d lost weight she couldn’t afford to lose, her cheekbones sharp and pajamas hanging loosely on her. There were faint bruises under her eyes almost always, and Lily had spoken to him about trying to find a fourth potions maker for the Exchange, since Harry was starting to walk around.

Sirius handed her toast. He’d learned not to call her out on it, just try and dangle the food in front of her until she noticed it was there.

She picked it up and put strawberry jam on it. “Late Walder Frey finally lost to death, then?” She cocked her head. “Tyene, you didn’t…”

Tyene laughed. “Why does everyone assume that?”

Rhaenys raised her eyebrows. “Because you _are_ a poison expert?”

Tyene allowed that. “I do promise this was without any manipulation on my part.”

“Please tell me Uncle…” Rhaenys started.

“No,” Tyene grinned. “It would have meant dealing with Death Eaters to have sold that poison.”

“Snape,” Sirius said firmly. “Talent, need for money, and lack of scruples? Sounds like him.”

“He’s an unofficial suspect,” Tyene admitted. “But no one is really willing to investigate.”

“Even if it means putting Black Walder in Azkaban?” Rhaenys mused, thinking about the malicious man who believed that women were only useful in bed. “Patricide is something even the more unethical families disapprove of, after all. It isn’t technically patricide, but Late Walder was head of the family, so legally…”

“He’ll get the maximum sentence,” Sirius frowned. “But it means honoring _Walder Frey_.”

“Childish prat,” Rhaenys said, picking up her tea tin and frowning. “Please tell me you aren’t finishing my tea.”

“I am not finishing your tea,” Sirius said promptly. “We are finishing your tea, since your mother is giving you a new tin this afternoon and talking politics gives me a headache.”

“Foolish Gryffindor,” Tyene said as Rhaenys took the kettle off. But she looked amused.

“I have honey here somewhere,” Rhaenys muttered. “If you take it to Stannis Baratheon, he’ll at the very least demand an investigation. Though I presume Frey’s already cremated, and unless someone is willing to provide some sort of evidence…”

“Not likely,” Sirius said thoughtfully. “Especially if Black Walder let his connections be known. Would you like to have a Death Eater floo you up in the middle of the night and ask you about how you lost them control of the Crossing and its wealth?”

Rhaenys shrugged. “Point there. Plus, old Frey was a bit obsessive on keeping the Crossing as his own personal fiefdom. Roslin doesn’t see the point in calling Aurors for inter-family issues.”

“Never mind the fact that those issues turn violent fast,” Sirius muttered. Rhaenys went a bit still at that, probably remembering what happened after he left Grimmauld Place.

“Mmm,” Tyene said through her tea. “A family that large all at each other’s throats.”

“It’ll tie up a good amount of the Death Eaters in petty squabbles, though,” Sirius pointed out with a grin. “Most of the good ones either don’t live at home, or are staying with relatives through the female line.”

“Or are married to Bolton,” Rhaenys murmured.

Sirius granted her that, as Teatray Waldawas nice. (And the complete opposite of Roose Bolton, who was cousin and nearly identical, personality wise, to Barty Crouch. Peter had gotten dead drunk when that engagement announcement was printed. Sirius had offered to help them run away together, but Peter had declined.)

~

And as the weeks went by and the Death Eater attacks seemed to approach a lull, a few patterns began to emerge. There was an announcement in the Prophet of added Aurors who would patrol the Express and Platform 9 ¾, and Lyanna Stark confirmed to the Order that most of them came from pureblooded families who had yet to declare sides in the war. It had been one of Catelyn-Stark-via-her-husband-the-auror’s  ideas, serving as additional deterrent against a death eater attack- killing or maiming one of the Lannisters’ followers would prompt retribution, at least. Starting the next week, despite the failure of the greater bill, number of smaller laws regarding the custody of magical children were passed, as well as laws against those considered “less than the magical ideal.”

Arianne flew into a rage at a meeting of the Potions Exchange that April, curls flying and torn shreds of the newspaper in her hands. Tyene, her ever present dark gold shadow, was still and her dark blue eyes were flat, the bland smile not coming close to reaching them.

From her spot at the cottage’s dining table, Lily sighed and conjured a series of plain clay pots. “For both of you,” she said wryly. “Destroy them, not the Wizenmagot. Visiting you in Azkaban would be a pain.”

Tyene nodded. “So we make sure we don’t get caught.” She was perched neatly on her chair, arms crossed and face mostly blank. (Sirius wasn’t entirely sure that the story about Tyene’s mother being a nun was true. He liked his eldritch abomination theory, and Rhaenys had looked mildly thoughtful after she stopped laughing herself sick.)

Lily narrowed her eyes. “That wasn’t my point and you know it.”

That tone of her voice had been observed to stop rampaging first years as soon as the sound had gotten to their little hindbrains and self-preservation instinct. Tyene merely gave her a skeptical look. Lily wondered if perhaps pregnancy had softened her ability to organize unruly crowds. She hoped not.

“Something needs to be done,” the blonde witch pointed out. “And reason isn’t working very well right now.”

Rhaenys sighed. “Look, the spine of the proposal is gone. Which, quite frankly, is better than it would have been if Arianne and Remus had done nothing. And if the people behind this whole mess start dying in suspicious circumstances…”

“They don’t have to accuse either of you,” Remus said mildly. He’d been looking over the accounting book, quill tapping the corners as he tried to work out the math. “No investigation needed, though I have no doubt that they’ll do one for form’s sake. They just have to say that it was by persons unknown, and run articles on what they stood for. They won’t mention the people they hurt, they won’t mention their failures or paint anything but glowing paintings of them. And then they will write about the dangerous behavior of “undesirable elements”, and lament the lax Ministry standards. If I am very, very lucky, then the Ministry will respond by posting reassurances and a few meaningless regulations.”

“And if you aren’t?” Aegon asked, showing a bit of his father and older sister’s deadly poker face. Arianne winced.

“Angry mobs can be a problem,” Remus said with ruthless good cheer. Lily watched as Sirius adjusted his chair to hide behind the combined hair of Rhaenys and the older Stark girl. It took a lot for Remus to turn his sarcasm on a friend, Lily knew- using against the girl he was probably in love with was probably even worse on him. “Stronger registration laws, informants, mandatory full-moon shelters, requiring healers to report possible infections, someone stealing the registry records… and that isn’t discussing what could happen to muggleborns.”

“I’m sorry, I thought that was already happening,” Arianne said dryly. “Uncle mentioned a disturbing uptick in muggleborns who receive their letter but don’t make it to the school. There are too many for auror protection, of course, and the Order is apparently spread too thin to deal with it.”

“We are,” Sirius said, eyes narrowed. “We really are- we’ve been taking heavy losses the past few weeks.” Too heavy, really, especially over the past few weeks or so, Lily knew. (Marlene, Benjy, Crakehall, not to mention last week when Myranda and Edmure had nearly gotten killed in a trap…)

She saw Rhaenys stiffen, and flat violet eyes meet hers. Lily nodded. A spy was the most logical explanation, when all was said and done.

She didn’t notice as she curved her hand over her stomach, pregnancy now starting to show under robes. She had defied the Death Eaters enough to make her child a target, not to mention the less flexible members of pureblood society by virtue of her existence.

She refused to allow her child be another of those losses.

Arianne nodded, trying for understanding. “I heard.” The split between Order members and the Potions Exchange only made sense if you thought about it sort of sideways- one, that Tyene was too familiar with poisons for anyone’s easy acceptance of her as a Light Witch. Unless you were Lily, who pointed out that Tyene was hardly her first Slytherin friend of dubious morality. Two, that if it was assumed that the Order was in control of the Potions Exchange, a good amount of their customers- charity cases and those who wished for discretion alike- would stop using it. The Exchange’s stubborn independence meant that people who could not afford to be openly supporting Dumbledore could use their services.

Therefore, needed medical care was given, a quiet network of support was building up around the Exchange, and they had no constraints imposed on them by anything but their finances.

Which didn’t mean that they had universal support. The Order was mildly disapproving of them as a whole, seeing the Exchange as too radical or too idealistic. And the Death Eaters were annoyed that the Exchange offered alternatives to their ranks.

Lily just had to hope that no one would ask her to choose. (Or ask Sirius to choose- he’d choose Rhaenys over Dumbledore, and the other boys would follow him without a word.)

~

“Now that they’re gone, and we have the house to ourselves for at least,” here she paused to nip down his neck, long hands playing with the hem of his shirt, “an hour or three, I have only one question to ask you.”

“Mmm?” Sirius was trying to grab her hairclip, which was a perfectly nice red dragony shape, but holding back too much of her hair for his tastes.

“How long have you had a spy in the Order?” she asked in the same wicked tones.

He let go of the clip, snarling it into a mess around her face. “You guessed?”

Rhaenys looked up at him, a gentle look of reproof on her face. “Sirius, my dear madman, you are many things. Wicked, twisty, and completely unwilling to do the obvious thing if you can come up with a crazier plan to do instead. Subtle is not on that list.”

He had to admit that was true. “We’re not sure. There are whispers about spies in the Ministry, turncloaks and Imperioused people reporting to Malfoy and his cronies. That’s the most popular theory right now- none of the information they gathered would be hard to get your hands on, as long as you can get to a meeting.”

“I can make extra Veritaserum,” she offered. “If they will take it from Mad Aerys’ granddaughter.”

He shrugged. “Opening an investigation could cause a panic, or desertions,” he pointed out. Moody had grumbled about security, and Sirius had to admit his points made sense. It was better to have some grumbling and chased-off prats who couldn’t see beyond their ego than to find your friends’ corpses.

“Standing offer,” she said dryly. “What did James and Lily want to ask you, anyway?”

Sirius grinned at the memory, strong enough to power the Patronus charm Lily was trying to teach the Order. “They want me to be the baby’s godfather.”

“And I’m to make sure you don’t go too terribly overboard?” she laughed. Her pants were unbuttoned, and Sirius wondered if side-along apparition to the bedroom would ruin the mood.

“Something like that,” Sirius admitted. Lily had actually done a fairly good impression of Professor McGonagall when she had told him that Rhaenys better keep him on a leash.

She bit her lip to keep from laughing, and he decided not to risk mood-ruining by apparition.

Their couch was remarkably comfy and long enough for him to stretch out. That was all he needed- well, that and the _purring_ note Rhaenys could hit.

~

Sirius had noticed the deaths of a handful of neutral Freys. The handful in the Order- Perwyn, Roslin, and a fair few others- were pale and tight-knit, with Roslin giving her apartment to a few of the Darry Freys and staying in Riverrun with Edmure and Brynden Tully.

 So he and James decided to pick up Roslin and Edmure, since travelling in groups was wiser, these days. (Also, Lily and Rhaenys both giving pleading looks? Was far too effective for Sirius’ piece of mind.)

Roslin looked horrible, with a swollen lip and a burn running from armpit to the dip of her collarbone, robes scorched and missing chunks. Edmure was fussing over her, putting on some cool green burn salve that Sirius recognized from the Exchange workshop that Rhaenys and Lily shared. The recipe was only known to a four people- well, five, as Tyene had most likely shared it with her father. (Though he wasn’t entirely sure how much of it Snape knew- Lily still added new flourishes and adjusted the recipe, and after five years it was probably unrecognizable.)

 Sirius raised an eyebrow and looked at James.

“Patient went wild or narrow escape?” James asked lightly. “There have been a lot of both, lately.”

Edmure shot him a grateful look as Roslin launched into a stumbling, stuttering series of stories about patients in St. Mungo’s, and a doctor who was trying to come up with a spell to detect the Imperius curse.

Sirius noticed Olyvar trying to set his own finger. (Well out of Roslin’s sight- healers were a terrifying lot, even if they were as shy as Roslin.) He motioned for Olyvar to hold it as flat as he could.

It wasn’t bad, bruised and bleeding knuckles and one cracked finger, between the joints. He splinted it neatly and started the healing spell. “Had to use it a lot when pranks went awry,” he said offhandedly.

“Thanks,” Olyvar said. “I mucked up my apparition- Father always said I was hopeless- and I ended up half on a roof.”

That didn’t match his injuries at all. Sirius just shook his head and put as light a notice-me-not as he could on it,

The next day, the Prophet discreetly mentioned the “disappearance” of Black Walder Frey. Sirius didn’t say a word.


	4. Brief Hours (June 1980- July 1981)

Mother hadn’t wanted Jeyne to work at Saint Mungo’s. She had insisted that she would find it too difficult, too messy, and too different from her mother’s expectation of what Jeyne should be.

There were days that Jeyne wondered if her mother knew that Jeyne had mostly ignored her advice in the ten plus months she had been at Hogwarts each year.

So Jeyne took the Starks up on their offer of a room, and Robb’s proposal had been accepted with alacrity. (She didn’t care if the world at large had thought of her as easy or pregnant or a gold digger. When he looked at her with that vulnerability, she felt like she was the only other person in the world, that he wanted _Jeyne_ , who played pick-up Quidditch and failed miserably to challenge him in Wizard’s chess.)

And Saint Mungo’s Hospital, despite being exhausting, messy, and bloody, was Jeyne’s favorite place in the world. She was useful there, with praise for her cleverness and explanations on how she could improve doled fairly. In turn, Jeyne took to organizing the patient charts, keeping a mental tally of how many people needed what type of care.

Which is how Jeyne Westerling realized that the Order and Ministry were both missing something.

It started with one of the Clifton boys from the Channel Islands, coming in with what had seemed like a beginning case of dragonpox- not quite as gruesome as grayscale, but still deadly to those weakened by it.

“Have you played anywhere you shouldn’t have?” Jeyne asked the boy, who was still pale and shaky, but still without the scaly splotches that distinguished dragonpox. He was allergic to one of the key ingredients of Pepper-Up Potion, which probably would have masked his symptoms anyway.

He shook his head. “No, miss.” He was probably about eight, poor boy, and prone to huffing at random intervals.

Jeyne grinned at him. “I happen to have brothers, dearie. That’s how I know you’re lying.”

“How?” he asked, green-grey eyes wide. Gerry had been a sweet boy, quiet and obedient, though getting a bit restless after a few days cooped up in a bed.

“Because you can’t keep kids from doing what they shouldn’t,” Jeyne pointed out dryly. Not without a large amount of behavior modification potions in their food, at any rate.

He blushed, and Jeyne ruffled his hair.  His family had taken to leaving “little things to keep him busy” every time they visited, and little Gerry was curled under his blanket from home, with a small pile of toys and books on his nightstand.

“So did you go anywhere, do anything that your brothers and sisters didn’t?” Jeyne asked.

He pulled his knees up and curled so his head was resting on them. “…Promise not to tell my mum?”

Jeyne frowned. “I promise to keep as much as I can private. If it was something you found, we may need to send people to clean it up so no one else gets sick.”

“I was playing with some stuff by the shore and I found some old coins,” he said sheepishly. “I put them under my bed so no one took them.”

Jeyne reported her findings to Catelyn Stark, who shook her head and sighed.

“Boys will be boys,” Mrs. Stark said with a rueful grin. “Jeyne, since you made the discovery, could you see if you can find the coins?”

Jeyne agreed, but frowned when she could not find a trace of them, though she saw the clever little hidey-hole they must have been with. There was a trace of some type of magic there, but nothing that even a bemused Humfrey Hightower could use.

“Some variation of leprechaun gold?” Humfrey suggested after a few hours of brain storming. “The sea has been known to do odd things to conjured objects, after all. It might have simply been a coincidence.”

Since Gerry was recovering, Jeyne had no real recourse but to accept.

After a few months, Jeyne noticed that quite a few people were being hit harder than they should by normally mild illnesses. Not everyone, and they came in for different reasons, but still quite a few.

She sighed and waited, gathering information as much as possible.

She just didn’t know what she was missing.

~

Lily paced when she was nervous. And right now…

“Prophecies, by far and by large, are complete foolishness, especially when the seer’s identity is kept in the dark,” Tyene said with a trace of wickedness in her grin. “Though I thank you for making me little Harry’s godmother. I take it this means that you think me more devious than Voldemort and his minions?”

Lily laughed at that. “I know that you’ll keep him safe.” She picked up Harry, who at two months was finally napping long enough Lily could relax and focus a bit more on work. Or at least bouncing theories off of Tyene. “And teach him to take care of himself, as well.”

“My family is very fond of self-sufficiency,” Tyene agreed. “What are you going to do about this prophecy?”

“Dragonstone, at least for now,” Lily admitted. “Rhaenys offered it, as Sirius is remarkably iffy on the thought of living there right now.” The fact that the security there had never been compromised in over five hundred years was something that made Lily feel like she might get a chance to relax and simply enjoy her time with her son. How nice would it be to not have to jump whenever she heard a sudden noise?

“Bit cold in the winter,” Tyene agreed with a straight face. “Though you’ll need someplace different on Full Moon nights- Father, Sarella, and I are still working on perfecting that potion. Damocles Belby is doing fairly well himself, but his potion is prohibitively expensive, and it is too easily tampered with. It’s as much a matter of finding honest suppliers as creating a recipe.”

Lily nodded- they had that problem whenever the Manderlys could not procure some of the more restricted items they needed. It required bullying, contracts with careful wording, and flat out bribery once people realized it was for the Exchange.

Finally, Lily managed to ask the question that had been on the edge of her mind since Rhaenys had made the offer. “Dragonstone… would the library there have protection spells?”

Tyene tilted her head slightly. “They would, yes. Sarella was looking for the legend of a doorway you could build to disrupt the Imperius, or Polyjuice.”

If Sarella could make it work, she would make a small fortune off of it. Lily grinned. “Useful.”

Tyene nodded. “Lily…” she sighed. “Be careful. Many of those old spells fell out of use for a reason.”

“I’ll be careful,” Lily said, wincing as Harry snatched at a loose lock of hair. She needed someone to help her with Harry, truly.

Tyene nodded, reaching across the table to let Harry play with her hands for a moment, before asking her final question.

“I always thought prophesied heros would be slightly more noticeable,” Tyene mused. “No glowing or forked tail or any of that for him, though.”

Lily snickered and wisely didn’t say that Sirius had pretty much said the same thing when told of the Prophecy. It would just make the older witch pout.

~

Elia had taken to hiding herself in Dragonstone, much to the worry of her family and friends. Drifting, was the word Rhaenys had used, playing with her sleeves and biting her lip. Mourning herself into an early grave for a man who didn’t deserve her, Ashara had snarled at him.

While having the Potters at Dragonstone was helping Elia- she enjoyed playing with Harry, and Lily had taken to asking her about Herbology and its effects on potions. Though, officially, Arthur knew nothing of the whereabouts of James and Lily Potter, and had carefully let it slip that he knew nothing of his goddaughter and her fiance’s role in helping them.

But that wasn’t enough to break through Elia’s walls, constructed piecemeal though the early days of her marriage, before Aerys managed to burn himself to ashes and Rhaegar had gotten over the worst of his own issues. It had taken him too much time, which had cooled their friendship considerably. (Elia bleeding, Aegon’s whimpers, and Rhaenys peering out from behind her tangled hair was what he saw whenever he came too close to the dementors, forgetting the regal set of Elia’s face and her steady planning to salvage what she could out of that disaster.)

So Arthur had made plans to coax Elia out into the world again, a step at a time.

“Hello, Arthur,” Elia said from the dining room. Her hair had been piled on top of her head, silver and brown twisted neatly. “All of the children are in the library. Lily and Sarella are apparently both working on their own projects.”

“So we have most of the house to ourselves?” Arthur asked with a pathetic amount of hope.

Elia gave a wicked, wicked twist of her lips that might have been a smile. “Yes, Arthur, we do. Anything in particular you feel the need to discuss?”

Well, he was tempted to yell at her for allowing herself to be put in danger like this, but she was a grown woman who made her own choices and he had to respect that.

Also, Elia had a broad and humiliating repertoire of curses, many of which had been tested on Arthur and Oberyn when they were idiots in school. As what embarrassed a fourteen year old Gryffindor was not all that different from what embarrassed a forty two year old Auror, he was inclined to give her some benefit of the doubt.

Come to think of it, she’d given them the same smile when they were in school.

“I am keeping my sister from killing me next time I land myself in Saint Mungo’s,” he tested. Elia sighed.

“Oh, really, Ashara needs to learn to listen to others sometime,” Elia groaned. “Please tell her I have _no_ desire to throw myself off of one of Dragonstone’s towers.”

Arthur chuckled at that as the door slammed open and his wand was between the eyes of a bespectacled young man whom he recognized after a moment as being James Potter.

“Sorry, sorry, Lily realized that she left her notebook here, and she needed it...” He was babbling, and Elia was trying very hard not to laugh at the absurdity of the situation.

A redheaded witch who must have been Potter’s wife followed him in, looking a bit amused and holding an infant. “I would apologize for James, but if I did that every time he did something stupid I’d never stop.” Despite her words, the tone was fond, and she pulled a battered muggle notebook from one of the chairs.  “We’ll leave you alone now.”

“I was just sort of threatened by _Arthur Dayne_ , Evans,” James said in an awed tone as her followed her.

“I haven’t been Evans in over a year, Potter,” Lily smirked. “And I’m sure this was an important moment for you.”

As soon as the door closed again, Elia started laughing silently, doubled up over the cup of tea she had been drinking.

“Happens more than you think,” Arthur said dryly. “Apparently I’m a legend now.”

~

“Are you sure about this, Lily?” Rhaenys asked. Lily had been researching in the library for months before finding her latest source.

The book was disturbingly simple. The leather bore no resemblance to human skin, or dementor skin, as Sirius had charmingly guessed of another volume that Dany was currently devouring. The ink was a faded purple, not the color of dried blood.

But it was the words, not their trappings, which prompted doubt.

“It seems like it would work,” Lily pointed out. James and Sirius were off looking at recipes for various wizarding explosives, safely out of earshot.

Rhaenys slumped over the table, tapping out something on the wood. “It probably will- the Lyseni, for all of their many, many quirks, were very good with rituals. It’s just rather finicky, and trusting the workbooks of one of Aegon the Unworthy’s mistresses probably isn’t the best idea.”

Lily continued ruthlessly. “But it’s the only thing that could work. And yes, I know this is a long shot, but if the worst happens…”

“You want to be prepared,” Rhaenys sighed. She really hoped Lily didn’t expect her to keep this a secret from Sirius.

“James won’t like it either,” Lily admitted, “but I’ll feel better knowing that there’s some safeguards in place to protect Harry, and you have to admit this would be a brilliant one.”

“Unexpected, to be sure,” Rhaenys agreed, darting a glance at the small study room Sarella had practically moved into. No one knew what she was doing these days, not even Uncle Oberyn. She supposed that was part and parcel of being an Unspeakable, but it didn’t mean that Rhaenys had to be _comfortable_ about it.

~

Springtime was supposed to be hopeful, in theory. Remus’ mother had read poetry about it, sometimes, when he was ill and they had exhausted the children’s books they owned. It had also been when night got shorter, and it stopped being quite so cold.

It was also wet, muddy, and still chilly.

And utterly without hope, at this rate.

“Myranda’s still alive, though?” Remus asked. The woman had _danced_ through the war, practically, and was a friend of Arianne, both bright and slightly off-kilter to Wizarding society, enjoying playing by their own rules. There had been near misses, but she’d never needed more patching up than dropping in on Riverrun to bother Roslin Tully.

“Barely,” Peter answered. He looked exhausted as all the rest of them, eyes darting all over.  “And Bronze Royce is dead. Bellatrix managed it, finally.”

Peter needed to get out of the country, maybe, relax before he wound up so tightly he broke.

“No one’s seen Caradoc Dearborn in a week,” Remus added quietly, seeing Peter flinch.

“Wasn’t he working with Sirius on something?” Peter asked.  

Remus frowned. “I think so. You would need to ask Myranda.” Sirius had been working with the Prewitt twins on something, he knew, from Rhaenys’ dry comments on how Dragonstone wasn’t a hotel, and Sirius had his own home.

“There’s been too many problems lately, you’d think You Know Who had a seer or something,” Peter muttered, slumping on the park bench.

Remus absently ran through the people he knew with some strain of the talent- Bran and Jojen were safe for now, Varamyr Sixskins was dead after trying to kill Jon and Rhaenys on the younger man’s birthday. There was the odd seer who had been mentioned by Shireen Baratheon as having been taken in by her grandparents. He might mention it to Dumbledore, but Shireen said he was being kept at the Department of Mysteries, as was the Red Priestess who had been friends with Mister Targaryen.

(And possibly Dany and Rhaenys, considering the Targaryen talent for true dreaming, but that was utterly useless, they both agreed, and only tended to come about with some form of unpleasant aid.)

“I think it’s a sign of how bad things are getting that I actually think it’s possible,” Remus groaned. Peter gave him a watery smile.

“Better that than a turncloak,” he pointed out. Remus snorted.

“’Arianne insists we have one. She says we should insist on loyalty oaths and so on,” Remus sighed. “Moody agreed, and Sirius, but I’m not sure we can push it through the rest of the Order.”

“Probably not,” Peter squeaked. “Can you imagine asking Leyton Hightower for a loyalty oath?”

Remus burst out laughing. He’d need to bring up that point to Arianne.

~

Sansa had always dreamed of a fairy tale wedding, with a lovely white dress and flowers in her hair, with a dashing prince waiting for her. (And since she was eleven, the prince had always been Willas Tyrell.)

She had not, however, dreamed of having her wedding during a war.

Oh, they were discussing flowers and gowns, but that wasn’t all. They were discussing security and who could be spared from the Auror’s office and who might be too injured to attend normally.

There was talk of a wedding at the end of August, then Christmas, then “perhaps next summer, when your siblings can attend.”

Sansa was fairly certain that she wouldn’t be married until she was completely grey. She was bemoaning this fate to an amused Rhaenys, who was plying her with whisky tea.

“Why don’t you just elope?” Rhaenys asked, sipping her tea as if she was being completely reasonable. “It isn’t uncommon, nowadays- I wonder if the main problem isn’t so much fear as no one being able to pull off a large wedding. Rather depressing to see holes from your losses.”

“Why haven’t you eloped, then?” Sansa asked, a bit more sharply than she intended.

“Arianne and Tyene would kill me,” Rhaenys gave her a look of comical misery, showing her the discreet diamond ring she’d been wearing for over a year and a half. “So we’re waiting until something forces our hand- we’ve made it clear we’re in love, living together, and intend on staying that way. All the marriage license would mean is that I take his last name.”

It was a bit more complicated than that, but Sansa didn’t say anything.

“Elopement could be romantic,” Rhaenys coaxed her. “Willas sweeping you off your feet and having a secret adventure, rose petals on the bed of an old fashioned inn…” She wrinkled her nose. “Now I’m imagining Willas as a pirate. Well, trying to. I can’t see it.”

Sansa blushed at the thought of Willas in one of those lace-up shirts and knee boots. Her friend raised her eyebrows at that, but Sansa was grateful she didn’t tease her.

The idea might have some merit…

~

Arya wanted to run away. Just because Sansa was an idiot about her wedding didn’t mean that Arya had to be as happy about it. She didn’t want to wear the stupid dress- which was in a color that made Arya look stupid, and was fluffy.

It was bad enough to wake up early in the summer, get poked and prodded and have Mother and Sansa give her sad looks for not doing everything right, but Margaery Tyrell was getting downright catty. Sansa was Arya’s sister, not hers.

The door opened, and an… impish looking Sansa snuck in.

“Arya, I am about to do something that is probably very stupid, could you come with me?” Sansa was bouncing on her toes and practically glowing.

“What is it?” Arya asked suspiciously.

“Well, you know how everything with the wedding has been incredibly bogged down, obviously, since you’ve been there providing commentary- are you going to try out for Seeker this year or are you going to be commentator? McGonagall might have a heart attack if you do it, though…” Sansa trailed off with a curly strand of hair wound around her finger.

“I’m going to try out- Gendy and Elia are going to be Beaters, and the slot’s open,” Arya shrugged, pulling out a grey blouse from her open dresser. “What do you want?”

“I’m going to elope- Willas and I are going up to Gretna Green, his uncle has provided the portkeys, but we need witnesses, so I’m taking you and Bran,” Sansa confessed sheepishly.

“Where’s Gretna Green?” Arya asked, looking for nicer trousers than she’d been planning on.

“Scottish border- it’s actually an oldish tradition, with elopements, given legal standards. The laws have changed, but it’s mentioned in so many stories… and they recently removed the residency requirement, for tourism. Willas thought it would make me happy,” Sansa concluded with a blush.

Willas Tyrell had gotten that idea right, Arya had to admit. Sansa had been looking gloomy lately, sliding back into her pre-Hogwart’s snappishness. Anything was better than that, even the idea of a town that drew people in so they could get married.

Arya only had one question left. “I don’t have to wear the dress?”

Sansa giggled. “No, you don’t.”

“Then hurry up, stupid, you don’t want to be late for your own wedding,” Arya retorted.


	5. Revelations (August 1981)

“Why did I agree to do this?” Loras asked quietly. Diagon Alley was large, overflowing with parents who were determinedly cheerful, taking advantage of the artificial peace. Bright whirls of color and a chaotic mess of sound, too much to keep track of. The trick was to pretend that you could take care of anything, that nothing got by you. Renly, who was not going through Auror training, looked amused at his unease, seeing through him with the ease of practice.

“Because my nieces are lovely, and Leona needed an escort, so we decided to have a public outing without worrying about anyone harrying us about how there are potions to cure our problems, and that as scions of old and respectable houses…” Renly started with a grin, blue eyes warm.

“We’re expected to throw out kids for the sake of tradition and putting them through Hogwarts,” Loras waved his hand. “I know this, Renly. I just choose to ignore it, and really, have you seen how many Tyrells there are? Though I admit Leo is a little shit.”

“Mmm,” Renly said, watching as his nieces’ cousins walked out of Flourish and Blotts. “I’m still amazed Lysa Lannister allows either of her sons to leave the house, much less attend Hogwarts.”

“Jaime put his foot down,” Loras said with a slight grin. “He pointed out that none of his nieces’ friends were hurt inside of Hogwarts. Waved his stump around and nearly called in Lady Cat.”

Sansa, who was escorting Arya and her brothers on her rare day off from Healer’s training, giggled. “Mum is intimidating, isn’t she?”

“Very,” Renly said with a mock shiver. “Lucky she wasn’t a Slytherin, or she would be ruling the world right now.”

“Instead we allow Grandfather to think he does,” Myrcella said mischievously. Shireen ducked her head, unruly black hair covering her grayscale and grin. (Shireen would probably be a pretty woman when she got older and grew into Stannis’ unfortunate jaw, Renly had told her in kinder words when they had found her listless and miserable after yet another comparison to her golden twin. As it was, she still hid far too often for her friends’ comfort.)

“Should we get OWLs study guides?” Bran Stark asked curiously. “Dany said they were rubbish…”

Sansa wrinkled her nose. “Yes, yes they are. I know Sam was going to make one that was a bit useful, but you’re best served by going through old textbooks and old exam questions, really.”

“Hard to have a useful study guide when the Defense professors keep dropping like flies,” Arya pointed out.

“It can’t be that bad,” Rickon Stark said.

“I don’t think we’ve had a solid defense professor since…” Renly thought about it. “Viserys said something about it when I was a firstie and he was a third year, and he had it from one of the Hightowers… Lyonesse, maybe? He fancied her madly, I know, and she was two years ahead of him…”

“Always something that matches the professor’s faults, too,” Shireen mused. “One of them was caught writing inappropriate letters to the Head Girl, and another blew his arm off with a bad spell when he was dodgy with wandwork, another mistook the type of dark creature he was trying to teach us about when he was a better dueller…”

Renly had heard about that. “This would be why I would never take the position,” he said dryly.

“Professor Dumbledore was getting a bit desperate this summer,” Sansa told them. “He asked Willas and Rhaenys both.”

“Willas turned him down flat, said he enjoyed living, and Cheshire…” Loras looked at Sansa incredulously. “Really?”

“She got an O on her NEWT, and she grew up with one of the best curse breakers in living memory,” Sansa said wryly, tucking her hair behind her ear. The quick flash of her wedding ring still surprised Loras. “Even if he was an Unspeakable.”

“Dumbledore just wanted an in for the Dragonstone library,” Renly guessed. “He hoped Rhaenys could be convinced to allow him to access it.”

“Or to keep her too busy to work on the Exchange,” Sansa said with surprising pessimism. “The fact that it isn’t an Order-influenced organization is so much a boon…”

“That it showcases the weaknesses in the Order’s organization,” Shireen guessed. “And that makes the non-Death Eaters seem very divided and weak.” She frowned. “Except most of the people involved wouldn’t want the Order’s help, or believe in them, anyway, and so there would still be that division.”

“Great-Aunt Olenna said Dumbledore is very divisive in certain circles,” Leona added shyly.  “Some say he goes too far, some say he doesn’t go far enough.”

“Grandmother, I think, is of the not-far-enough party,” Loras drawled. “At least when it comes to defending his opinions.” That earned a round of chuckles from everyone, and Renly giving him a knowing look.

“There was something about Grindenwald, too,” Arya said. “I overheard Grandfather Tully saying something about it to Uncle Blackfish.”

Sansa raised her eyebrows. “Arya! What did I tell you about eavesdropping?”

Arya’s look turned impish. “That I shouldn’t do it… unless I tell you what I learned.”

Everyone’s laughter was the last thing Loras heard before the pain kicked in.

~

Loras fell screaming and bleeding, and Renly pulled Loras into the apothacary’s shop as Sansa herded all of the students into the shop after them, grabbing Arya’s wrist so she didn’t charge them.

“Arya, _no_!” Sansa said sharply, blue eyes darting over the Alley as she shoved Myrcella in. The younger girl noticed that Sansa had her hand on her wand, prodding the glowering metamorphagus. Arya’s hair was as red as Sansa’s, now, corkscrewing up in a Medusa-like tangle. “There are at least a dozen of them, and you can’t fight them alone. I saw Arthur Dayne and Jaime Lannister and Sirius out there, and possibly Father will be called in with Uncle Robert and Aunt Lyanna. You cannot distract them, and if Father sees you in danger, you will be his first priority.”

“Is the Floo working?” Shireen asked the shopkeeper, who was pale and watching with wide eyes as Uncle Renly cast as many spells as possible to stop Loras from bleeding out.

Myrcella responded to her twin’s question by grabbing a pinch of floo powder and running in the back. The shop was dusty and needed a good house-elf to take care of it, but the fireplace was stacked perfectly to use the floo, some embers still smoldering. She cast a spell to coax the flames a little higher, then threw in the powder.

The flames stayed normal, and Myrcella went back in the front.

“It didn’t work,” she grumbled, watching as Renly, Arya, and Bran grabbed bits from the shelves.

“We’re going to make a surprise in case anyone unfriendly comes in,” Sansa said tiredly. She was keeping watch over Loras, who was still and pale, if no longer covered in blood. “The spell damaged his back quite badly, but it didn’t hit true. Not much of it hit his spine, thank Merlin- one of the proper healers can fix that, but I’m not far enough along in my training to risk it when we have someplace to hide. There is considerable tissue damage, though, and I’m worried about some of his organs.”

She looked at Uncle Renly, who was talking with determined cheer to Bran about some of the possible uses for their traps. “The way Renly hauled him in here didn’t help much,” she added quietly. “It tore him up more. If we can’t get out soon Loras will be lucky to have scars running down his back.”

“He had to!” Myrcella hissed. “Otherwise Loras would have gotten hit again, or trampled!” Uncle Renly didn’t seem to be listening.

“There are spells he should have used…” Sansa frowned. “Which aren’t taught at Hogwarts, I admit, which is a massive mistake. Uncle Brandon taught it to me when Robb kept dragging me to practice Quidditch with him. Thought I might need it if one of Robb’s tricks went wrong. Which is why I assumed Renly would know it.”

Oh, Myrcella had to admit that made sense. Renly and Loras both loved showing off on brooms, and a spell to help carry injured fliers would be something someone should have taught them.

“Why did they attack Diagon Alley, though?” Myrcella asked.

“If he said that his followers shouldn’t be shopping in Diagon today,” Bran mused, walking over with what looked like an erumpet horn, “then he could be sure to only hit people he wants to hit.”

“Or he wants hostages,” Myrcella pointed out. “A lot of important people have children going to Hogwarts. There’s Egg and Tystane and Hightowers and Tyrells and…” she stopped and looked at Shireen, who was wearing what Myrcella knew was an identical expression of horror.

“The daughters of Stannis and Cersei Baratheon, granddaughters of Tywin Lannister,” Shireen finished. “And the Starks, since Ned Stark is right after Amelia Bones for headship of the Aurors. Almost all of Hoster Tully’s grandchildren, and I saw Jorelle and Lyanna Mormont out there, and all of them are Aurors. ”

“Trys said he’d meet me here,” Myrcella said quietly. “He and Ned Dayne were coming with Ned’s Aunt Ashara.” The thought of her quiet, clever boyfriend out in that mess was terrifying.

“He means to make the Light bleed, then,” Bran said oddly, eyes like pinpricks in a sea of unearthly blue. “Or bind it so tightly it savages itself.”

“Bran, shh,” Sansa said, ruffling her brother’s hair and holding him tightly. (Hiding his eyes and slightly absent expression, and oh, Merlin, was Bran a _seer_? There had been Stark seers before, but not in ages. That explained his friendship with the Reeds, though- it was an open secret that Jojen Reed was one.)

“We’re ready,” Renly said, coming up to them with a set of vials. “Let’s make some surprises!”

~

Diagon Alley was a _mess_. There were patches of fighting up and down, and Garlan had felt his heart stop when Loras fell- really, it had been obscenely easy to pick his brother’s group out in a crowd, such a riot of different people sticking so close together.

Arthur grabbed his shoulder. “No, Baratheon and Stark got them in the Apothecary shop, they’ll be fine for now. Ashara’s teaching Sansa, she’ll keep Loras alive until we get the wards down.”

And Tyrion had told him about Myrcella and Arya’s talent for explosives. They’d have a surprise or seven in place if anyone tried to get in.

“Aye, they need hostages if they want to make this mess useful to them,” Moody said thoughtfully. “Any methods they use can’t hold forever, not with the alley such a mess of entrances. Told Dumbledore they should come up with a way around school shopping.”

“Yes, Alastor, because Olivander would gladly bring all of his wands to the four corners of the islands this summer,” Arthur snapped.

“Or just Hogwarts,” Garlan pointed out. “If they aren’t supposed to use them until school starts…”

His mentors looked at him skeptically. “Did you ever know anyone who listened to that rule?” Arthur asked. “Because Ashara tried to turn me into a turtle the day she got mine.”

“Willas might have listened, mostly because he got all Uncle Baelor’s stories of the accidental reversal squad.” Which is where Marg was now, with her wonderfully soothing manner and clever mind. At least two of his siblings were safe, even if losing Sansa might break Willas.”The tip about that raid- trap, you reckon?”

“Trap or just a lie,” Moody agreed. “It’s why I got Seaworth to sign off on us being here- Diagon’s been a target for a proper raid for a while now, and having all of our men being sent to damned Cardiff seemed risky.”

“Malfoy’s leading that group near Gringott’s,” Arthur judged. “I can take him easily enough- more show than actual backbone. Garlan, you try and clear that knot near the Quidditch shop- the Carrows are only dangerous…”

“…When you fight both at once,” he finished. His sister had compiled a list of every known or suspected Death Eater, and every bit of information they knew. (Quentyn and Renly had helped, but it was Margaery’s curly writing on the parchment.) “Take out one by surprise and the other is weakened.”

“I’ll clear the nest by the apothecary shop, lad,” Moody said with a feral grin. “I think I see an old friend or two.”

With that, they split, and Garlan aimed a curse that took out Alecto, who was a shade quicker on her feet than her brother. Amycus’ return fire was an instinctive, sickly yellow bolt that Garlan dodged, sweeping his own curse at the man.

Someone screamed, and Garlan wished he had the time to send the man out of the open air. But Amycus dodged a hair faster than the spell, and he sent out three more in rapid succession.

A stray spell whizzed by his ear, and Garlan grimly resolved to practice against _four_ of his coworkers from now on.

But Amycus was down, and Garlan started looking for his next target. One wizard was unmasked and bloody, tossing curses at all and sundry. Garlan stunned him before he got someone hurt.

He glanced at the Apothecary, where Moody was trying to deal with four opponents at once.

He dropped one foolish enough to make himself a perfect target. Moody glared at him, and Garlan let out a little chuckle before checking on Arthur.

“Huh. I always thought unspeakable evil would cause the immediate area to cold and dark,” Garlan mused nonsensically. “Probably got it mixed up with dementors.”

He could feel Leonette trying to slap him on the back of the head for that foolishness, but when it came down to it, one did not often see one’s mentor dueling Voldemort.

Arthur was holding up… actually really, really well. He was fast, and had mostly forgone complicated wand movement for quick sudden movements and a type of logic that made sense if you were him. Voldemort was aiming for carelessness, but Garlan saw him stumble a bit over a torn up bit of the street.

Jaime Lannister peeked out of a nook, grinned lazily, and fired a stinging hex at Voldemort’s ankle. Since he was focusing on Arthur’s series of spells and what looked like a variation on Peter’s getaway firework illusion, it connected, distracted him enough to actually cause the murderous bastard to stumble.

Someone cheered, and Garlan shook his head and went back to trying to pick off the Death Eaters who had come scurrying along with their master.

It didn’t take long before he noticed how dark it was getting, and that his muscles were starting to stiffen with cold. There were others who noticed that, the last few stragglers watching the duel between Arthur Dayne and You Know Who. (Someone, somewhere, was going to write wretched poetry about it, and Garlan would read it aloud.)

He ducked into a shallow shelter, following the cold to aim at whatever it was. (Dementors caused cold, but he didn’t have the sense of depression he should be feeling, and his worst memories were not rushing to overwhelm him.) His first thought was inferi- they moved properly for that, a stiff lope that was nothing like that muggle movie he’d gone to see with Leonette.)

They were not inferi, Garlan realized. Inferi had dead eyes, fogged over and not glowing a cold blue.

A jet of flame burnt one to a crisp, the flames seeming to melt it like candle wax rather than char, and Garlan followed whoever it was, picking off any he could find.

“ ** _Dracarys_**!”

The word was sharp, short, and not a spell Garlan had ever been taught.

“’Lo, Targaryen, fancy seeing you here,” he called. Rhaenys laughed at that, her blacklight flame cutting down half a dozen.

Someone behind him was being violently ill, but it was helping. There had to have been seventy of them at first, and after a fire-whip spell from someone who sounded worryingly like Myranda Royce, they were down to sixty two before they could properly get in the alley.

A low tangle of familiar blonde hair caused a wall of flame to fence in, Tyrion and Tysha Crofter each maintaining an end. Tysha was nearest him, half-hidden behind a doorway, brown eyes flat. (Garlan knew that the couple had taken shit from a lot of some of Tyrion’s family, not to mention anyone who felt the need to weigh in. While Lily Potter dealt with a blazing defiance and unwavering support, Tysha got a bit… brittle over the past few years, ducking out of many public meeting places and barely showing up to friendly gatherings.)

Garlan aimed at someone he was fairly certain was Mulciber, using a disabling and highly embarrassing hex he’d learned from Remus. Mulciber went down vomiting, which he considered a victory.

“Garlan, one day your feathers will be ruffled,” she called from across the alleyway. There was a groan.

“Hello, Black,” Garlan added, to be fair. Potter had probably tipped him off, and Rhaenys was, for all of her refusal to join the Aurors or listen to any authority other than her own, very good at taking care of herself. If Voldemort was not there, Garlan would actually be happy for the help.

Arthur was still winning, though there was a welt on his face and he was holding one arm stiffly. (And Jaime, after a lengthy pause at the sight of the frozen corpses, was adding the occasional spell of his own.)

“Fuck,” Tyrion muttered. “We need to chase him away somehow.”

“Plans for that would be good,” Garlan shot back. “Got any?”

“Working…” Tyrion stopped, looking behind Garlan towards the Apothecary shop. “Huh.”

Garlan took a moment to look behind him and laughed.

It was a shaking line of crockery, some of which slipped a bit, sizzling over torn-up cobblestone. Renly’s form was seen crouching behind the heavy dark door of the shop, wand sticking out at knob height and directing the flow of objects.

They landed on the dead, and the dead burned in pairs, in quartets. They kept pressing against the flames, steam and smoke undistinguishable, and started trying to get around it.

Then Tysha yelped, and half the flame wall fell.

“She’s fine,” Garlan told Tyrion before he could let his end go, the flames starting to waver.

Though the dead were bottlenecked, trying to get through and being felled, still Garlan thought he counted twenty left.

Arthur was faltering, not moving as quickly. All it would take is one more strike…

Sirius looked at Garlan, a short flick of his wand and a raised eyebrow enough for permission.

_Let’s end this._

Garlan nodded. He’d have to explain this to his superiors, anyway. Black wasn’t an Auror, and there would be complaints about letting Voldemort get away. That they shouldn’t be prioritizing medical care for a muggleborn witch and an off-duty Auror. That he would be leaving missing what looked to be almost ten followers and seventy walking corpses, but it was the symbolism of the thing. (And half the Death Eaters were _dead_. Garlan understood the Order’s principles, but he preferred knowing that he was actually preventing more massacres, not merely holding them back until the instigators were released. It would be different if the Ministry’s security and integrity wasn’t as leaky as a parchment pail.)

Sirius’ patronus, much to Garlan’s amusement, looked very much like Meraxes the Devil Cat done in shades of silver. It slunk to Renly, who swirls his wand and creates a bundle of caustic potions that hover above the breach, which Garlan and Rhaenys use to thin the ranks of the dead. (Maybe a dozen left at this rate, which isn’t bad.)

Arthur is playing the desperate man so well that Garlan believes it, sweat and blood going into mere survival.

The pots suddenly flew towards the duel, Tyrion summoned Arthur, and Sirius and Rhaenys let out a wave of Fiendfyre, blowing the potions, burning half the remaining walking dead, and Voldemort vanished in a rather tattered swirl of shadowy robes.

“Huzzah,” Tysha said hoarsely, one hand covering her bleeding shoulder, complete with blackened skin and visible bone.

“It worked,” Garlan shrugged. “And we’re all alive.”

And then the Fiendfyre devoured the last of the dead men.

~

Losing Gregor Clegane and the widespread support of the Freys- useful in numbers and wealth under Black Walder, if nothing else- should have helped the war effort, Dany thought. Bran had been more cheerful at the death of that madman, even without most of his full moon company. (He was down to Aegon and possibly Arya, whose Metamorphagi talents led her to frightening ease when working on self-transfiguration.)

However, she could hear reports from various sources, namely a nervous Quentyn, who was serving as a junior undersecretary seconded to the Aurors, this wasn’t the case.

A office building fire in muggle Manchester had burned suspiciously hot, and some had reported the green flames of wildfire. Thirty people had died, and while there was no Dark Mark, it would not be the first time a less than brilliant wizard had accidentally set the balm alight too soon.

There had been a number of students withdrawn from Hogwarts- the Vance heir, and Jaime Lannister and his Tully wife had fought bitterly over where their sons should go to school. (Lannister had won the argument, and Robin Arryn had been sorted into Ravenclaw like his cousins Bran and Sansa.)

Several people had vanished, some permanently, some only for a day or two, returned shaken and jerky in their movements. (Doran Martell and Leyton Hightower were both calling for an inspection of those vanished and returned, using Legilimency. Imperioused or turncloak Ministry employees would be able to cause all manner of havoc, and records offices would provide all sorts of dangerous information, judging by the remarks she overheard. No one thought much of newly graduated witches, especially those who looked younger than they were.)

Which had lead her to sitting in the receiving room of the Red Keep, which Rhaegar’s family had retreated from without a fuss. Viserys would one day want Dragonstone, either for himself or his son. The only question was how long his genuine love for Elia and Rhaenys would keep him from acting on that desire. Which in turn most likely rested heavily on if he ever chose a bride. (If only Arianne had proven agreeable to that plan. She would have kept him in line. Dany was not entirely sure what her not-cousin saw in Lupin. Perhaps it was that he occasionally told her no?)

The flames turned green, and Rhaenys came tumbling out of the fire, covered in stone dust and grime, which in turn was pasted on her skin by what Dany thought was sweat and blood.

“Diagon Alley had an attack,” her niece said, shoulders slumped and leaning against the fireplace. “It was a bad one. We’re all alright- Loras and Tysha were pretty badly hurt, and Mad Eye might lose the leg still, Aunt Ashara isn’t sure, and Uncle Arthur is sleeping like the dead…” She shuddered at that, for some reason. “But casualties were very low on our side. Viserys is where, by the way?”

“Right here.” Viserys had come into the room with his wand out, checking an uncomfortable Rhaenys, who was squirming like a cat confronted with a bath.

“I’m fine, most of the blood isn’t mine, I just didn’t want you to work yourself into a fit when you heard, Mother is fine as well, did you know she was seeing Uncle Art?” Rhaenys chanted, a flicker of a smile when it was Viserys’ turn to look uncomfortable for a moment.

“Well,” Dany said musingly, “It isn’t as if no one suggested the three of them weren’t all in a relationship anyway.”

“Mmm,” Rhaenys said, looking at Viserys with pleading eyes. “Can we not speculate on the potential kinkiness of my parents’ social life?”

“You tried to throw your mother to the wolves,” Viserys smirked. “Don’t complain when we turn the tables.”

“Right, sorry, slight shell shock moment right now, and I need to get back to Riverrun, because I need to shout at someone, possibly one of the multitude of people I know who work in the Department of Mysteries and neglected to inform anyone that Voldemort was working with what looked awfully like the wights from my bedtime stories.”

Rhaenys looked a bit wild-eyed at the last, and Dany wondered fleetingly if the Targaryen madness had settled on her niece. The flames grew green again, and a mulish Sirius Black jumped out.

“Did you tell them about the wights?” he asked. He looked as badly off as Rhaenys, with some of Sansa’s healing mess on his torn shoulder.

Viserys nodded. “I suppose you want my brother’s worknotes that weren’t already confiscated by the Department? I mean, judging by Rhaenys’ little fit there.”

“I’m sorry, Viserys, but we’ll need them,” Rhaenys said, tangling her hands in her hair and doubtless getting more blood in there. “Drat, I’ll have to cut the whole mess off. Anyway, I figure most of the records he used came from the Dragonstone library- we did have a slew of ancestors who were interested in the tales of the Longest Night, and I know Alysanne Targaryen did a field study near…”

She swayed and Sirius grabbed her elbows. “Near where?”

Viserys looked pained, and finished. “Near _Harrenhal_ , dearest niece, isn’t that right?”

Dany wondered what a city that had been razed by dementors and Death Eaters over two years ago had to do with anything.

Judging by Sirius’ sick expression, it had to do with something horrifying.

~

The dead were walking, and they were not alone. It was like something out of a story, if you liked your stories to be utterly miserable epics of despair and tragedy.

Personally, Shireen didn’t. Being the tragic, scarred twin of Myrcella Baratheon was enough misery. Not that Shireen didn’t love her sister- but really, if anyone could bother to be subtle, she would enjoy it. Myrcella was sharp and loud, and everyone assumed Shireen was the good twin, which meant most of her insults went over people’s heads.

(That wasn’t fair. Arya didn’t pity her. Neither did Bran, Tommen, or Robin. Egg had merely grinned and asked if she would like to trade. Gendry had merely asked if grayscale was more wizarding weirdness. Devan had known her long enough Shireen _knew_ he didn’t care.

She had good friends.)

“Why didn’t the Aurors come?” Myrcella asked her, scrubbed clean and huddled under her (Gryffindor, Lannister) blanket, golden curls and white face in a sea of red and gold.

“Because they had a major operation in Cardiff,” Shireen remembered. “There was a pattern that made the Aurors and Father think that there was a base being run by the Lestranges. It would have had captives, and that would have done good for Father.”

“Because Crouch wants Father’s job,” Myrcella nodded. She had always had a knack for putting together people’s motivations. “And there hasn’t been anything since Black Walder died, and that was ages ago. And there was Gregor Clegane, but since Rhaegar Targaryen died, that cancelled out the good.”

Shireen thought about it. “There was a squad in Diagon Alley, plus people who I think were Order members. But that was it.”

Mother did not like the Order. She thought they were rabble-rousers, as bad as the Potion’s Exchange. But that… well, Sirius Black was a troublemaker, everyone knew that. But Rhaenys and Sansa were both elegant, and Roslin Frey was kind.

 “Because the Lestranges terrify people,” Myrcella guessed. “And it’s likely that Voldemort might have been there. But he wasn’t… and I heard Renly say that Cardiff was probably a trap, and Uncle Tyrion agreed with him.”

Shireen nodded. “Everyone guessed that there was a spy in the Ministry, and I bet he set it up. Did you notice who he brought? None of the really scary ones.” That wasn’t quite right. “People who could take hostages, rather than just kill everyone.”

“If it’s a trap…” Myrcella bit her lip. “He takes people and bleeds the Aurors, like his men were bled when the Freys splintered.”

“And the wights, to show he has new monsters at his command,” Shireen agreed.

Myrcella’s grin was quite a bit like Uncle Jaime’s when he was angry, all sharp and amusement at another’s misstep. “But that didn’t work so well, did it? Arthur Dayne held him off, and they managed to burn all of the corpses he brought with him.”

“We were lucky Rhaenys knew the stories well enough,” Shireen said, remembering Father telling them to practice their fire spells. Her twin’s expression undoubtedly mirrored her own.

“What’s going on, Shireen?” Myrcella asked, looking as lost as she ever did. Normally Shireen was the doubtful one, the one Joffery teased and hexed, the one afraid.

Shireen crossed over to her sister’s bed and curled up under the covers, worrying about all of the Auror’s who might have walked into a trap.

After all, if all of the more unrestrained Death Eater’s weren’t at the Alley...

~

It had been depressingly easy to spot the spy. Cersei Baratheon, of all people, had come into her office at Saint Mungo’s, tossed the papers at her, and asked how long her old friend had been a traitor.

Petyr’s signature on three pages, falsified tips that had come in through the mail of Wizenmagot members of varying positions. He hadn’t bothered to hide it- he probably thought no one would notice.

_Petyr_ had set the stage for a trap that resulted in twenty dead men and women. Ned had a gash across his leg that, between muscle damage and lingering issues from the curse, would probably never work properly again. Robb… her boy might never wake up. Saint Mungo’s was under lockdown, with only approved people allowed in and out, because there were so many people here that the director thought that it was likely someone would come to finish the job, and her other children were at Riverrun, waiting for her to come to them.

She was still shaking when Cersei left her, with something like pity on her face.

“Cat?” Lysa was in the hospital, and it took Catelyn a moment to understand why. Robin was here, because he had a bad seizure earlier, and Lysa had sent Tommen to the Alley with Jaime to pick up the things for Hogwarts, and Cat had mentioned that Sansa and Bran would be there. That had soothed Lysa. (Lysa had finally stopped mentioning what happened to Bran when Tommen had said something to her, which made life  so much easier on everyone.)

“Lysa,” Catelyn held out the copies that Cersei had left for her. Her sister’s puzzled expression turned to horror and stunned disbelief.

“No, this is false, it’s a set-up,” Lysa said, rubbing her eyes. “Petyr wouldn’t do that, he wouldn’t…”

“He was perfectly positioned for it,” Catelyn said quietly. “He deals with all sorts of paperwork, and randomly checks his employee’s work- you said that he did it yourself, Lysa. How random do you truly think they were? He was the perfect spy- who could think him capable of this? We all assumed it was a department head, or a senior Wizenmagot member.”

“Couldn’t he be under Imperius?” Lysa asked, looking desperate.

“We’ll test for it, but I doubt it, Lysa,” Catelyn said, tucking the papers in her robes. “I’ll let the guards know he isn’t to be trusted, and when Cersei finds him she can see what he knew…”

Catelyn swayed for a moment, as something hit her. “Did Petyr know the children would be at Diagon today?” Voldemort had been there, those walking dead creatures, and from what she heard Loras Tyrell was gravely injured.

Lysa went whey-pale, nails digging into her cheeks. “No, no, he wouldn’t, that rat, that… that, traitor!” Lysa swirled out of the room. “He followed me here, did you know? He’s with Robin right now, he’s with my boy, and he tried to kill one son already!”

“Or capture,” Catelyn said thoughtfully. “Tywin Lannister’s grandson? He’s only been aided by Lannister’s neutrality, but Tywin was furious when Jaime lost his hand. At least all of the transportation systems are on lockdown… Lysa?”

Her younger sister, her silly, vain little sister with her petty cruelties and her lovely, distant husband, looked at her with a serious expression.

“Can you tell Petyr I want to see him?” Catelyn asked. “Bring him up to my office.”

She was going to have _words_ with Petyr Baelish, she reflected as Lysa went to go fetch the man. She should probably talk to the Aurors, but most of them were currently being treated for various injuries.

It was excruciating, the waiting. Catelyn started pacing, trying not to flinch with every sound of footsteps, every raised voice becoming Lysa, or God forbid, Cersei Baratheon confronting Petyr.

After what seemed like hours, a subdued Lysa tugged a bemused, falsely sympathetic Petyr through the door.

“I don’t quite see what I can do, Cat, but of course I will be happy to help you get your daughters back,” Petyr was saying. “I suspect most, if not all of the demands, will be ones to curtail your husband, who undoubtedly drew their attention with his activities. Not a very subtle man, Ned Stark.”

Catelyn looked at Lysa, who shrugged and slammed the door shut. “I needed something to lure him here, and he knew that Tommen was safe.”

That made a good deal of sense, though Petyr was looking confused. “What?”

“Oh, Petyr,” Lysa crooned, turning on him, wand at his throat. “We have so much to talk about.” Her sister’s face was a mask of pain and fury. _“Like the fact that you tried to kill my sons!”_

Catelyn was torn between wanting to join her sister- if he was the Ministry Spy, the one no one had wanted to believe existed, the spymaster in the Ministry- he could have been the one who sent Clagane after Bran, had tried to have _Ned_ killed, three of her other children kidnapped and held as hostages- and the knowledge that they needed from him to begin to realize all of the damage he had wrought over the years.

Then a wicked, vengeful part of her imagined Petyr in a dank Azkaban cell after spending the necessary time having his mind picked apart with Legilimency and Veritaserum.

“I never tried to kill your children,” Petyr said, looking at the wand with a look of bemusement. “Cat, a little help? I think Lysa is…” He grunted as Lysa jabbed the wand into the hollow of his throat.

“Lysa,” she said gaily, seeing her former friend’s face light up with hope. “Surely you won’t give Littlefinger the mercy of a quick death? The aurors will have _many_ questions for him. Of the angry sort- from what I heard, one of the Pipers just died, which means… how many dead aurors today? How many children at risk? Not to mention how _long_ this must have been going on.”

“Cat?” Petyr said uncertainly. “Cat, I did it all for you…”

“I never wanted it, Petyr,” Catelyn pointed out, a curious calm settling on her. Petyr had simply never understood, foolish boy. “I never wanted _you_. Only Ned. Only ever Ned, and he could have died on one of your wild kneazle hunts.”

Petyr let out a strangled sound, and Lysa brought down her wand in one quick, slashing movement, and the chief record-keeper for the Wizenmagot fell like a tree.

The door creaked open, and Brienne Tarth ducked her head. “Er, is everything all right?”

Catelyn’s laughter was as wildly hysterical as Lysa’s, and Brienne closed the door again, undoubtedly going to fetch back-up.

She’d need to get herself under control, soon, and explain what had happened. 


	6. Where Night and Chaos Meet (October 1981)

“Subtlety has never been your strong suit, has it?” Rhaenys asked him, not bothering to look up from her desk, which was buried under a small mountain of notes and ingredients. She liked being back in the cottage- she loved the smell of the sea and the white and red paint they had compromised on, even if Remus had made candy-cane jokes while they worked on it. It was home, a cozy little place they filled with warmth and laughter. (She wasn’t sure that was possible on Dragonstone, even if she invited all of their respective friends and recognized family.)

Sirius looked at her, hand on his heart. “I have no need for subtlety, I live a blameless life,” he told her, which was possibly one of the boldest lies she had ever heard in her _life_.

“You are so lucky I’m willing to cover for your atrocious lies,” Rhaenys told him, standing up so as to better face him.

Which would work much better if she didn’t come up to his chin and he attached any meaning to the concept of personal space.

“I’m not bad at lying,” Sirius grinned. “Remember the incident with the carrots?”

“Shh, never mention that when Arianne could drop in unexpectedly,” Rhaenys laughed at that. “Now, you were visiting James and Lily, because that is a container of Lily’s busy-day soup on the counter.”

“I was,” Sirius tilted up her face. His face was tired and drawn, but the slightly distant, amused expression was too familiar. “So how is that not subtle?”

Rhaenys’ expression was as close a mimicry of her mother’s skeptical look as she could manage. “You are planning something, which I know because I’ve known you since I was _five_. If I can’t tell when you are planning something, then I would deserve any pranks you throw my way.”

“You pushed me into a duck pond,” Sirius was smirking at that. “And you completely ruined the prissy look that my mother tried to force on me, which meant of course that you were the only woman I would ever love.”

Rhaenys snickered. “Sirius, you didn’t ask me out until _sixth year_.”

He shrugged. “I did kiss you in fifth. Also, both of your Uncles were there, and Bellatrix had been trying to scare me with stories about the Red Viper.”

“You only did it to make me shut up, if I remember correctly,” Rhaenys said dryly. They had been working on a History of Magic essay, and Sirius had startled needling her about some of her more colorful dead relatives. She’d fired back with a few of his, which tended less towards amusing insanity and walking through a field of snakes and more towards serial killers with political clout.

Though his family had never had half-siblings solve inheritance squabbles by feeding the legal heir to a dragon.

“And you were discussing something to do with them going into hiding,” Rhaenys added, making a production of her deduction. “Because they seem to think staying in Dragonstone is a bad idea.”

“People know they’re there,” Sirius pointed out. “The old houses- Dragonstone, Highgarden, Winterfell, Riverrun, the Eyrie- they have enough protections to make Hogwarts look unguarded. But there is no reason to provoke the Death Eaters into trying to prove they can take them. We keep them in reserve, we can use them when we need them.”

“Dumbledore’s argument, I’m guessing?” Rhaenys sighed. “It’s not helping, really. It’s making Voldemort out to be more of a monster than he is…” she frowned. “Well, more capable a monster. Trickery and the ability to use wizarding fears against the political system is an old trick, and it isn’t as if he _created_ the wights.”

“Merely hiding them and oh, he struck a bargain with them,” Sirius agreed with a grin. “Which is new and creepy.”

“No, no, the Night’s King did it, a little after the Battle for the Dawn,” she pointed out. “He’s not doing anything new, just trying to emulate those who have gone before him. And Lily decided to go with the charm she was talking about, with the Secret-Keeper?”

Sirius nodded, looking guilty and smug at once. It wasn’t a very good combination on him. “Yeah, and they decided not to go with Dumbledore as the Secret-Keeper. He has enough on his plate, and all.”

Rhaenys felt herself sway as if from a great height, like she was leaning out of one of the towers on one of Viserys’ crazy bets again. “And you would be a perfect choice for Secret Keeper, wouldn’t you?”

Well, she couldn’t tell him _now_ , could she?

“Everyone knows I wouldn’t betray James and Lily,” Sirius said, and Rhaenys wanted to deal with the peculiarity of that phrasing, she really did, but first she should go vomit.

“Are you still sick?” Sirius asked, steadying her. How the hell someone managed to be an arrogant, devil-may-care… well, devil, and still be prone to worrying like Sirius did was a mystery to her, but one she appreciated.

“Mmm, ask me again in a couple of minutes,” she chose, the spots starting to recede from her vision. “And if everyone knows, aren’t you basically walking around with a massive target on your back? Should I be worried- more than usual, I mean?”

Something about that made him flinch. “Cheshire, love, you do have a way of dancing around the subject when you want to twist the knife in, don’t you?”

“I think it’s time to confess, Sirius,” she said, trying to sweep the cobwebs from her mind. “It’s meant to be good for the soul. What glorious bit of trickery are you trying for this time?”

“What makes you think I’m trying to trick someone?” Sirius asked.

“Mmm,” Rhaenys said, trying not to laugh, because that would not go well with her nausea. “Because you’re breathing?”

“Am I that predictable?” Sirius asked her.

“To be fair, I have known you how many years?” She looked at him through the hair that had fallen in front of her face.

“Didn’t we just go over that?” he said, looking over her shoulder. “Are you looking up stories about Azor Ahai?”

“Yeah, Sarella thinks if we look it over, we can find out what happened to Lightbringer,” Rhaenys held up a bloodstained scrap of parchment. “Fire spells have a limited effect on the draugr, or Others, or whatever silly name you want to call them. And that effect works differently not only depending on the wizard, which makes sense, but on the creatures- the same wizard can burn one with ease, but the second will take four or five spells to go down, which is highly impractical, especially if we have a mob made up of wights and draugr attacking a heavily populated area.”

“So we have to bring the battle to them,” Sirius said.

“Mmm, a group of Aurors dropped wildfire on Hardhome and Harrenhall,” Rhaenys admitted. “But it went astray and at least one of the Aurors was consumed by it.”

“So dropping it on the Isle of Faces would be a bad idea,” Sirius mused.

“I wouldn’t drop wildfire on a deeply magical island full of weirwood trees, no,” Rhaenys dropped the paper with a frown. “Formed from the heart of a star, quenched by a lover’s heartblood, freely offered… something about this is ringing all the bells…”

She froze, and turned to the mirror on the edge of her note constellation, ignoring the dull cramps and focusing on the fire in her veins. “Viserys, I need to talk to you.”

It seemed to take an age for her uncle to answer, Sirius trying to figure out what she was getting at.

“Rhaenys?” He looked more rumpled than usual, with his pale blonde hair sticking up in bits. “What’s wrong?”

“You remember those stories you used to tell me when you wanted to creep all of us out?” she asked curiously.

He nodded. “Most of them.”

“Do you remember what you told me about Valyrian steel and how it was forged?” Rhaenys said, choosing to sit down before she started swaying.

Sleep was a good thing, if done in moderation. She probably should go sleep after she told Sarella about this.

“Yes, yes, that it was forged with spells that were either stolen from or by the goblins, and that to cool the steel, they drenched it in the blood of Muggles,” Viserys answered, confusion clear. “Why?”

“How much of that was true?” Rhaenys asked.

“All of it, as far as I know,” Viserys scratched his chin in thought. “Except perhaps the bit about goblins- I think that might have been something one of the tutors your father insisted on had brought up, and I added it in for detail.”

“So Valaryian steel is made by using an unwilling blood sacrifice,” Rhaenys frowned. “And you end up with a smoky black metal that can slice through any enchantment and kill nearly anything.”

“Which is why no one makes it anymore,” Viserys said. “The spells died out with the old bard-smiths who fashioned them.”

“Thanks,” Rhaenys said as she cut the connection on a protesting Viserys, looking at Sirius. He almost figured it out, Rhaenys judged, but he hadn’t grown up with stories of the Sword of the Morning.

“So Valyrian steel is a bastardization of the process used to create Lightbringer?” Sirius attempted.

Rhaenys nodded, sweeping aside a pile of papers. “Bright magic- a sacrifice willingly made to save the world- turned to darkness and cruelty. The darkness of the blade is a reflection of that! Which means that Lightbringer wouldn’t be dark like obsidian, but…”

“Bright,” Sirius finished.

“It was right in front of our faces,” Rhaenys said, laughter threatening to bubble up. “Dawn, a sword that belongs to the most prestigious fighter that the Dayne family can offer, the witch or wizard known as the Sword of the Morning, a sword that is like Valaryian steel in all but color.”

“It’s a white metal, then?” Sirius asked. Rhaenys nodded.

“It’s an old story- Aunt Ashara told it to me, when I was little. Supposedly it comes from the heart of a star, but the metal is totally different from meteoritic iron.”

“…Do we tell Sarella first or do we warn your godfather about the mess we are about to dump on his lap?” Sirius asked with perfect sincerity.

Rhaenys had to laugh at that point. “Sarella knows a multitude of nasty spells with extremely obscure countercurses. We tell her after you spill your big trick to me.”

Sirius looked cornered and vaguely like a puppy. “Ah, well…”

~

Arthur Dayne had dueled Voldemort himself, and he’d _almost_ won. This shouldn’t be so complicated, really. Simple fighting with someone who couldn’t send spells back at him.

He would, however, feel a bit more confident if it hadn’t been _Sarella_ telling him that he needed to wield Dawn. It wasn’t that he doubted her scholarship- well, Sarella and Rhaenys’ scholarship. It was just that Sarella was a bit hard to read, and he was worried that they were missing something.

Everyone said the Light was losing, bleeding fighters while turncloaks and cravens flocked to Voldemort’s banner. They needed another decisive victory, and soon.

Yes, they had won the battle in Diagon Alley, but there had been Dementors near Norwich, and Malfoy had been talking to Euron Crow’s Eye. The Aurors were down a third of their number since the war had begun in earnest, and from what he heard, the Order was just as bad, if not worse.

So he was part of the landing team sent to the Isle of Faces. Which many considered to be haunted, cursed, or some variation thereof. It was certainly as full of magic as Hogwarts, with the half-bare weirwood trees and their carved faces.

Ned Stark looked perfectly comfortable in the woods, if watchful. He met Arthur’s eyes and gave him a tired smile. “It feels like home.”

Ah, Ned and many of the men here- the Great and Small Jon Umbers, Maege Mormont and her two eldest daughters, Gregory Flint, with family on both sides of the war, and quiet Howland Reed from the Department of Mysteries- were from the families who had been around to sign the Pact between wizards and the children of the forest, and most were familiar with godswoods.

Others did not look quite so comfortable- Edmure Tully, for all he grew up less than two hours away, was one of them. (Actually, that explained quite a bit- his pregnant wife was helping Catelyn Stark set up the casualty station in Riverrun. If this went wrong, Riverrun was the next line of defense.) Robert Baratheon kept opening his mouth as if to let out one of his booming jokes- Arthur wondered with a wry grin if he knew _why_ some of the rookies had nicknamed him “Zeus”. Oswell Whent, whose cousin had died in the initial wight attack, was looking around like he wanted to set something on fire. Garlan was looking at the group with something like skepticism.

The Order members, who had been brought in by a sheepish looking Robb Stark and a smug Alastor, were about as mixed- Sirius Black looked vaguely serene, though that might have more to do with finally getting something to hit. Humfrey Hightower and Myranda Royce where arguing quietly with Emmaline Vance, who looked as if she wanted desperately to be somewhere else. Rhaegar’s sister Danaerys was there as well, with her cropped silver-gold hair and a feral grin. Three of the Sand Snakes were there, as well as a bemused Oberyn, who was lurking at the edges of the group and tapping one of the trees with his wand.

Damn, he missed Rhaegar right now. Oberyn’s surprises were usually not enjoyable unless you were out of the blast radius.

Oberyn pulled a bag out of the tree, putting it in a leather case. “Why would they be stashing coins in trees along the coast,” he asked the group.

“Poisoning?” The redheaded Stark offered. Everyone shot him a look as he turned as bright as his hair. “No, seriously- Jeyne’s been tracing a bunch of people who got sick, and the first was a boy who found some galleons by the beach.”

“…Why?” Oberyn tapped the case with his foot. “Is it a smoke screen? A warning to the people opposing them?”

“A virus?” Garlan offered. “We don’t know where they came from. If it works like vampirism or lycanthropy…”

Arthur nearly snorted as Oberyn took a discreet step away from the case.

“We’re currently on the southernmost tip of the island,” Arthur said, making sure that Vance, Royce, and Hightower were listening. He should have felt a bit silly, with Dawn sheathed and ready for him to use, but something about it felt right. “We will be making a sweep, tail to tip of this island. It is estimated to be two miles long by one mile at its widest point, which seems manageable, but expect attacks…”

Clearly the wights and their masters had a sense of dramatic timing, because that was when they chose to come swarming through the woods, and the battle was on.

~

The wights fell easily, and Robert Baretheon didn’t think there was much sport in it. Ned said it was giving the poor bastards peace, that if the souls were still in there they were giving them a gift. It was good and saintly and very Ned, but half-frozen corpses were more a nuisance than an opportunity for grace.

He blasted a pile from Ned’s boy, who tossed him a quick grin as he returned the favor.

“This is too easy,” Moody grunted.

“Like target practice,” Ned agreed. “Keep an eye out for their masters.”

“How many can fit on this damn island, anyway?” the Royce girl asked, swatting one with a banisher that created a pile-up for Hightower to burn.

“Magic’s involved,” Reed pointed out. “Do you really want to know?”

The quiet from that statement was broken by a cry from one Flint- one of the ice monsters had sliced him neck to navel, and he fell.

Thirty of the damn things- fanning out to surround the huddled wizards, all silent and holding swords.

Dayne pulled out his snow-pale sword, and Robert would have stopped to admire the trail of smoke as he sliced through them if he wasn’t busy killing the damn things himself.

More were coming in, trying to swarm Dayne. Robert used a fire-whip to snap one’s sword at the base, causing a look of comical surprise on its face before Maege Mormont destroyed it. The Targaryen girl was quick as well, and quietly brutal in clearing piles off of the more endangered fighters.

When one got too close, Black banished one of the more intact bodies littering the ground at them, distracting them when he used a Firestorm to blacken and melt half a dozen and bringing out an unholy wail.

“Right, that worked well enough,” he said, a bit green around the edges. “Least he won’t rise, poor bastard.”

Robert grinned at that. “One less to stab us in the back.”

Ned gave them both a disapproving look and went back to fighting.

It wasn’t boring- they bled and were damned quick, and there was a vast difference in their skills and strength. It was cutting loose and _fighting_ , and he ignored the beginnings of exhaustion as he kept on.

They fought and they died, both sides. Myranda Royce was guarding a half-collapsed Hightower, and two Order members had died.

Well, that was why untrained volunteers weren’t as good as…

There was a short gasp, and Robert turned to see what was behind him, just in time to see his best friend- his brother in all but blood, the one he had chosen- fall to the ground.

Ned Stark had died as he lived- quietly guarding Robert’s back.

Robert blasted the bastard who killed him as fast as he could, feeling the lightening hot rage fill him, leaving room for nothing else. He smashed at another, feeling satisfied at the smear of corrosive black blood and the torn bodies. Ned was dead, when he should have been _Robert_ dying in battle. Ned was supposed to die old and grey and surrounded by great-grandchildren.

They fought and they died, until the woman monster came.

~

Arthur decided that he’d had enough of this insanity about the same time the felt a prickle on the back of his neck, and he was facing an unarmored creature, with winter-pale skin and black hair braided into a crown.

She gave him a sad smile before drawing her own sword.

It was the rhythm that he had learned as a child, ducking and weaving and the call of metal on ice. He was leaving notches on the ice/glass sword, deep and weakening the material.

He was also getting tired, and it showed. His movements were slower, and his attention kept straying towards the battle around him. Ned Stark had died, and Baratheon was fighting like a man who didn’t care if he lived or died. Danaerys was scowling as she destroyed the third wight to enter Baratheon’s blind spot in as many minutes, the man not even trying to keep an eye out. Reed was trying to do something, with Lyanna Stark’s son as assistant and Black acting as an aggrieved guard dog.

The trees trembled. There was no wind, but the trees trembled and the queen-like creature stumbled for a moment, and Dawn went into her chest.

~

“Come on,” Sirius said, getting a bit annoyed by the fact that he couldn’t actually move as much as he needed to if he wanted to survive. They needed this over now, while Humfrey was still salvageable and they didn’t lose more people.

( _Shit_ , how was he going to tell the Stark girls about their father? Baratheon would cock it up and probably be half drunk, he’d be the same if it was James. At least James was safe under the charm.)

“We need to get this right the first time, Black,” Jon said. “Unless you want the island to catch on fire.”

“Huh, Moody said this would only _probably_ be a suicide mission,” Sirius replied, aiming at two wights. “Seriously, every expansion charm has its limits, and this isn’t a big place.”

“They took advantage of the root system, I think,” Reed mused. “The Children of the Forest used them to make a cave system, not just here, of course, but I think the wights used it as a base and built from there.

Sirius tried not to wonder how deep the root system could go. “And wildfire would end badly, I know, so what are you doing?”

“Greenseer blood and will,” Jon said crankily. “Bran and Jojen are safely in Riverrun, with my sister and his mother watching over him.”

“So the Flame Princess doesn’t get any ideas?” Sirius asked. Melisandre and Sirius did not get along, for all that she liked Rhaenys well enough. (He had a feeling that had more to do with Mr. Targaryen than anything else. He didn’t know the full story, but apparently he’d brought her to England a few years back.)

“Pretty much,” Jon admitted. “She insisted that we burn down the island. Possibly using muggle bombs.”

Sirius raised his eyebrows. Arya had mentioned a muggleborn friend of hers was curious about using muggle weapons against dementors, which seemed like a good idea. The older version of wildfire had supposedly worked on dementors, before they had been bound to Azkaban.

The Dragonstone library probably had the old recipes, Sirius thought as he tore apart another wight. He’d need to go bother Rhaenys about that. Once this was done, the dementors would probably be kept busy, so Voldemort didn’t look weak.

They just needed to hurry.

~

Bran and Jojen were both sleeping, having been drugged with a potion Sarella had found in the Hightower library. Supposedly it would induce a sort of trance state, with a hard-won branch of weirwood in each hand. (Lyanna and Benjen Stark had each stolen one from the Isle of Faces.)

Catelyn Stark was watching them both, one of the two assigned to it. “They’re so young,” she said for the third time in Rhaenys’ shift.

Rhaenys sent her a tired look. “They are, I agree, but we’re doing all we can.” And they aren’t so young that the wights won’t eat them, a crabby voice in the back of her head pointed out.  

She shook her head. She understood Mrs. Stark’s worry- Sirius and Aunt Arthur were there, as well as Mrs. Stark’s husband, brother, and eldest son. And her shift was almost done- then she would catnap before an emergency.

(There had been a raid in Dorset that morning, sixteen innocents dead and one of Arianne’s yearmates in the infirmary, an Order member who couldn’t trust Saint Mungo’s as a muggleborn. Olyvar Frey had been found beaten half to death in an alley, and Roslin had been honestly worried he wouldn’t make it.)

Another roiling wave of nausea, and she couldn’t hide her wince.

“How far along are you?” Mrs. Stark asked absently. “I noticed how worried Ashara looked when you came in yesterday, and you seem to have horrible mother’s stomach.” She gave Rhaenys a tired smile. “I have had a few of my own, as well. It isn’t hard to notice.”

“Eight weeks,” Rhaenys offered after a moment. “Aunt Ashara said she’ll be amazed if I make it to twelve, considering my family history and history of getting hit by nasty curses.”

The older witch nodded at that. It was true- Grandmother Targaryen had died giving birth to Dany, after all, and Mother had been in Saint Mungo’s for months after each of her births. It was apparently a quirk of the Targaryens- Lyanna Stark had nearly died when Jon was born, from the hasty rant Aunt Ashara had lectured her with, and Renly was ages younger than Stannis or Robert for a reason.

Most of these, a part of her that sounded a great deal like Father said, happened well after the fire at Summerhall that had killed off most branches of the Targaryen family. All of them, really, which is probably why you didn’t mess with rituals without proper precaution and careful selection of the participants.

The whole mess basically meant that she refused to tell Sirius until November ended, getting her safely over into the second trimester. It hadn’t been terribly hard- Sirius had been busy with planning this, overseeing his madcap plan to ensure no one knew about Peter being the Secret Keeper, and general Order duties, she’d hardly seen him at all in the past month.

It would break his heart if she miscarried, and he would probably place her under glass once Aunt Ashara started rounding on him about how high-risk this pregnancy was. (Arianne had started collecting topics for Rhaenys to research, and started trying to suggest research assistants. She had to be useful somehow.)

Melisandre came in, carrying a cup of tea. “Your daughter is bringing up your lunch. Ashara told me that Rhaenys should have this.”

Rhaenys looked at the murky tea, trying not to mutter implications on healer’s brews. It wasn’t one she was familiar with, but she hadn’t had much to do with most pregnancy brews as yet.

Meraxes let out a low growl as Rhaenys gulped it down as much as she could. She’d have to drink something to get the taste out of her mouth.

She missed the suspicious look that Catelyn Stark gave Melisandre and the cup she took with her when she swept past Jeyne.

“She worries me,” Jeyne muttered. “All that red…”

“Melisandre was trained as a priestess-prophetess,” Rhaenys rattled off. “She clings to the traditions of her order, which was destroyed horribly- I think Euron Greyjoy was one of the people responsible for that, which gives you a good idea of just how bad it was.”

Jeyne flushed. “It doesn’t mean she’s a good person, though.”

Rhaenys sighed. “I know. But she doesn’t want the wights and their masters to win, anymore than we do. And she’s been on the team investigating this since the beginning.”

Jeyne sighed. “Be that as it may…” She stopped. “Rhaenys, are you all right?”

She swayed, and felt Jeyne catch her as her world spiraled into darkness.

“Only death can pay for life,” something that sounded like the priestess whispered in her mind. “One day you’ll thank me, for this reward. You and your lover both struck a blow for the light.”

~

Bran followed the path the weirwood branch laid out, red where it wasn’t too dark to see.

“Root and branch,” Jojen murmured, following the path. “You know what we have to do?”

Fire would burn the weirwoods, leaving damage that would rot the roots and leave corruption and decay, Mr. Targaryen had speculated. You needed something else, that wouldn’t kill the weirwood trees. He’d said something about ravens and towers and the wizarding-muggle information barrier, as well, but Bran wasn’t entirely sure what he meant. He’d probably ask Gendry later if he knew, or Sam Tarly. Sam probably knew.

“We have to get rid of this, somehow,” Bran said, looking at the roots, covered in sickly blue-grey mold, like a bundle of loose fluff, or an evil cloud or something.

“Do you know how?” Jojen asked hopefully. The Department of Mysteries had no greenseers, only Melisandre with her fires and sacrifice. (“We kind of… catalogue, more than anything,” Jon had told him sheepishly, when Sarella had first suggested this.) This was flying blind, with no real hints as to where they should go.

Bran had rather hoped Jojen could figure something out.

“Knives will cut the roots and take too long,” Bran said, feeling something recoil inside him at the sight of the lacy rot.

“We shouldn’t use fire,” Jojen added thoughtfully. “At least not fire that burns.”

“Fire that doesn’t burn?” Bran sounded scornful even to his own ears, and he shot Jojen a look of apology. The other boy didn’t say a word. “A Flame-freezing charm won’t burn the mold.”

“There are spells to banish evil,” Jojen said solemnly. Bran felt his eyebrows go up to his hairline- Jon and Sansa had insisted that Bran get an equal say in the planning of this, when Sarella had called together her band of wizards, so he knew Aunt Lyanna and her team had used a patronus to drive off the Others.

But the thing was, Bran was only sixteen, and the Patronus charm was past NEWT levels. He couldn’t get a corporal one just yet, even though Dad had insisted he learn.

Bran focused anyway, thinking of Remus being unexpectedly kind that first September, right after Clegane. Seeing his friends attempt to steal the Maruader’s notes on the animagus transformation, even if it failed. (And an annotated book finding its way into Bran’s cauldron, with his Potion professor’s notes.) And Shireen curling up against him with a book that spilled over her lap, telling him some of the more ridiculous parts with that shy half smile. Tyene Sand bouncing about after the associates of the Potions Exchange beat Belby to a solution for the Wolfsbane Potion, and Sansa deciding to elope with Willas, dragging four of her wedding attendants and going to Gretna Green, even if “they weren’t living in a Regency Romance Novel.”

He doesn’t ask what Jojen thought about.

He cast the spell just as the world started to shake.


	7. Aftermath (November 1981)

“Why the _fuck_ shouldn’t I kill her right now?”

Sirius, Edmure observed from his position as far as possible from the angry wizard, was not entirely rational right now.

“Because Ashara Dayne is far more skilled at knowing what will cause the maximum amount of pain with little lasting damage,” Catelyn said dryly. Sirius almost seemed to be calm at that.

“So who is with Rhaenys right now?” he asked.

“Arya,” Catelyn answered evenly. “She’s fond of her, what with her help when Bran was hurt, and she’s stable now.”

Sirius seemed to collapse against the wall, seemingly vulnerable. (Edmure never believed Sirius- or any of the Marauders, save maybe Remus- could be vulnerable. Academically he knew that was impossible, but in practice…)

“She was pregnant,” Sirius wasn’t asking so much as turning the idea over. “Really?”

“Really,” Catelyn said, sympathy clear now he was behaving a bit less dangerously.

“She didn’t tell me,” Sirius was a bit put out at that fact.

“It was an extremely high risk pregnancy, and Rhaenys knew she was unlikely to carry to term.” Catelyn put a hand on his shoulder. “She was hopeful, from what I could see. She would likely have told you in a month if it continued.”

“Why did Melisandre poison her, though?” Edmure asked. It made no sense that he could see.

“She said that it needed to be done, and that only death could pay for life,” his sister answered, half-collapsing on the chair. That showed how _tired_ his prim and proper sister was, almost more than her red eyes. (He’d thought she would break when Robert Baratheon had told her about Ned, but Cat had steel in her spine and had asked to speak to Sirius privately. She’d probably gather her children and keep them close for the next few days, but she’d survive.) “Other than that, I really don’t know, Edmure. Lyanna went to get a writ for veritaserum, as we suspect she was acting on a vision she refused to share with us.”

“No creepy priestess magic to keep it from working on her?” Edmure hoped not. He didn’t think that the Martells would be content to have Melisandre arrested with no answers. Even Viserys would try to kill her for this.

“None that Benjen knows of, but he went to check,” Catelyn said. She turned to Sirius. “She won’t wake for another hour or so- the dose of the moon tea was wrong, I suspect, and she bled far more than she ought, but she will probably need to see you as soon as possible. Her mother is here, as well.”

Sirius ran his hand through his hair, drawing in a breath. “I think… yeah, I’ll need to be here. I was going to check on Peter- he’s been nervous, and I planned on going to let him know how everything turned out, and James.”

“Lannister can go talk to Pettigrew,” Edmure suggested. “He’s been doing nothing but driving us crazy, anyway. And one hand or two, he’s still a good duelist. And Lily would kill you if you left Rhaenys alone right now, if Elia didn’t beat you to it.”It was cruel to bring up Elia, he knew, who had suffered for her husband not being there. But Sirius knew Rhaenys’ scars, just like she knew his. They had to work around them when they could.

Sirius nodded, reluctant but accepting it anyway. “That seems like a good plan… you’re sure she’ll be alright?”

Catelyn nodded. “Go.”

Edmure watched his sister follow Sirius out the door, and went to go find Rickon. His youngest nephew had been trying to con sweets out of the House Elf again, but he’d probably be better off with his mother right now, before he heard about his father’s death in the worst possible way.

~

Elia stifled the reflexive smile when she came into her daughter’s room the first morning of November. Trys and Little Elia had taken up the two armchairs someone had brought in, red velvet monstrosities with blue fringe. Trys’ wand was dangling out of his hand like he’d fallen asleep holding it, and Elia snoring softly.

Her daughter was sleeping peacefully on her back, a bit pale and with massive circles under her eyes, her fiancé curled around one side and hiding his face in her hair.

She’d let them sleep- Jaime and Arthur had just come in, full of strange news stories and rumors. If any of them were true, neither would be getting any rest after this.

She sat on the deep windowsill, watching them all rest for a few moments.

Little Elia stirred first, responding to the heavy footfalls and voices in the hallway. Sirius sat up, pulling his wand from under a pillow as Trys’ fell to the floor. “Is that Crouch?” Sirius asked the room, rubbing his eyes. “I could swear it was Crouch…”

Rhaenys sat up, leaning heavily against Sirius. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know- maybe they want your statement against Melisandre?” Sirius couldn’t bring himself to sound convincing. “Or… how much do you think we infuriated Voldemort when we cleared out the Isle?”

“Bit quick for him to be pulling together a revenge plot,” Rhaenys said thoughtfully.

“There were Auror operations across the island,” Elia found herself pointing out. Sirius blushed from the throat _up_ , she observed with amusement. “Someone could have been hurt…”

“Crouch wouldn’t come out for that,” Sirius said as the door opened. “That’s Seaworth…”

“Sirius Black, you are under arrest,” Crouch said, with four Aurors flanking him. A bit much for one sleepy wizard, Elia thought wryly.

Trys tilted his head, and Elia stifled a grin at the very cross looking Baratheon twins behind the Aurors, with the dark-haired one- Shireen, Elia thought- heading towards the rooms the resting Aurors were staying at.

“Er…” Sirius looked at the others. “Does anyone know what I did?” He looked rather lacking in danger compared to the previous night, Elia admitted, after Sansa had levitated him into a bathtub to clear off the blood and muck. Not to mention the sleep tousled hair and lack of a shirt.

“I think you want Melisandre, the nice lady who poisoned me,” Rhaenys said dryly. “Unless platonic bed sharing is now illegal?”

“Shouldn’t you be arrested, then?” Little Elia asked. Trys nudged her.

“I was bleeding out, that doesn’t count,” Rhaenys grumbled.

“For the disappearance of Peter Pettigrew and accessory to the murders of Lily and James Potter,” Crouch said, and Sirius went as still as a statue as everyone else looked horrified.

“They’re dead?” Sirius sounded like a lost little boy, and Elia wondered which of the pair was holding the other up. “ _How_?”

The auror behind Crouch- a blonde girl taller than Obara, with a look of doubt like a cloak, answered. “He found the Potter’s home in Godric’s Hollow, and they fought- Lily must have done something, because…”

“Silence, Tarth,” Crouch said, just as Oberyn and Stannis Baratheon came in, Arthur following with a look that didn’t bode well for anyone involved. Jaime Lannister was following with a look that mixed amusement and that absent sort of cruelty that made her distrust his twin.

“Voldemort’s dead, from what we can tell, and no one wants to admit a genius muggleborn did it,” Oberyn told the room.

Elia didn’t miss the tiny flicker of _something_ on her daughter’s face.

“She managed the impossible, then,” said Jaime. “How long before we manage to forget her completely?”

Sirius growled at that, and Elia doubted the sudden tired listing of her daughter was entirely genuine. The boy couldn’t launch himself at Jaime, at least.

“So _why_ do you want to arrest Sirius?” Rhaenys sounded very even at that, if slightly softer in volume than her normal tone. Elia was suddenly, sharply reminded of Rhaegar at that, the slight arch of her eyebrows and promise of cold fury in her eyes.

Someone was going to be broken by this, and it wouldn’t be her daughter.

“We suspect,” someone who Elia vaguely recognized, a boy Arianne’s age with curly brown hair and a spaniel expression, started, “that Black was the one who betrayed the Potters and gave up their location.” It took her a moment to place him- he’d been taken to a smaller family dinner or two by Arianne before she left Hogwarts.

“So he’s coming with us,” Crouch said, trying to hurry them along.

“Do you have any evidence, Mister Crouch?” Elia asked as sweetly as she could. Crouch drew his eyebrows together, clearly ready to insult her.

“I do not take orders from half…” he began, and a very irritated Shireen interrupted.

“Yes, Mister Crouch, after all, Miss Targaryen isn’t feeling well,” she said, and Jaime hid a smile as his niece continued, “and Mister Black was at the Isle of Faces all day yesterday, so he probably should be resting anyway.”

“Yes, Crouch, I think we should hear this evidence,” Stannis Baratheon looked well and truly furious. “After all, you clearly decided that I should not be bothered by any of this. How very lucky that my wife was able to let me know the good news, or else I should have missed all of it.”

The blonde auror- Tarth- was very bad at hiding her expressions, Elia noticed with amusement. Jaime Lannister seemed to notice it as well, because his amused look was turned directly on her.

“It has been confirmed that Black was the only one who knew the Potter’s location, thanks to some spell that Dumbledore managed to unearth,” Crouch started.

“Ah, yes, the most impossible tricksters I have ever met- and I include _both_ my siblings in that statement, I might add- did something that blatantly obvious,” Oberyn grinned at her, and Elia stuck out her tongue, childish as it might have been.

He’d deserved most of it, anyway.

Elia sighed at the sound of even more people, including what sounded like a cane. Moody must be coming along, with Merlin knew who else. 

“He wasn’t the Secret Keeper anyway,” Rhaenys said, meeting Crouch’s eyes. “Anyone could have guessed it was Sirius, after all, and he didn’t want to risk betraying them under torture.”

“The girl’s right,” Moody pointed out from behind everyone. “Black was the obvious choice, and I can’t see him or Potter not knowing that.”

“So who was the Secret Keeper?”Arthur asked, close enough that his words should ruffle Crouch’s hair, if it were any longer.

“Peter,” Sirius croaked. “No one would guess, you see, and we all thought we were being so clever, not telling anyone.” Rhaenys nudged him. “Well, Rhaenys guessed, but she doesn’t count. She lives with me.”

“He’s horrible at hiding things, anyway,” Rhaenys added, words a bit less crisp. “I know all my presents early, ‘less he picks it up the day of. Heart on his sleeve.”

“This is only hearsay,” Crouch scowled. “You are trying to cover your own guilt.”

“Well, I _did_ suggest Peter, but only because we all thought him too much a coward to be a spy that long,” Sirius said, hands in loose fists.

“The Order had a spy for over a year, from what Dumbledore has said,” Stannis added, with a pleased look at the whole mess. “Was Pettigrew a member?”

Sirius nodded.

“And by all reports, so was Black,” Crouch persisted. “Just because he is well connected does not mean he can circumvent justice.”

“And the Exchange only had one bad moment, when we were getting set up,” Rhaenys said, “And I suspect that Sybell Spicer was more to blame for that than anything else. Peter wasn’t involved in that- it was mostly Lily and Sirius when it came to overlap.”

“Just makes a better headline to arrest a Black than a tagalong like Pettigrew?” Arthur was glaring down at Crouch. “Ignoring most of the facts at hand, and constructing theories from circumstances you do like? Black has an alibi from almost immediately after the Fidelious was cast to right now- unless you think he got around myself, Moody, Rhaenys, Oberyn Martell, Ned Stark, _and_ Elia?”

“How do we know they are all honest?” Crouch asked, stepping right back on the pressure rune. “The girl is clearly in love with him, and Elia Targaryen is a werewolf, and less…”

“Uncle Arthur,” Rhaenys sounded remarkably like Oberyn at that moment, Elia thought dazedly, “you probably shouldn’t be holding a wand on the Deputy Director of the DMLE. You don’t know where he’s been, after all.” She tossed her mother an amused look, and Elia wondered why she even bothered being subtle.

Possibly for Aegon. He was very naïve at times.

“Former Deputy Director for this cock-up,” Jaime suggested lazily, and Elia was reminded that Crouch was a very uncomfortable man to work for, and Jaime had run into issues with Crouch before. Also, that he was Stannis’ brother in law.

“In addition to others,” Stannis agreed. “We’ve taken heavy criticism for some of Crouch’s directives before.”

And if Stannis cared about public opinion one jot, Elia would eat the Sorting Hat. He was, however, very attached to his job.

So this was what a failed coup looked like, Elia thought bemusedly. The Tarth girl was heading over to the bed, sympathy plain, while Moody was reaming out one of the others who followed Crouch. Trys and Little Elia hadn’t let go of their wands, and were watching Tarth carefully.

“I’m sorry about Lily and James,” she said quietly. “Lily was my friend, even if we weren’t as close as you and James. Renly is trying to find out what happened to Harry- he’s alive, Dumbledore said, but he hid him somewhere.”

“Thanks,” Sirius said, resting his head on Rhaenys. “You were trying to be the voice of reason back there, Brienne.”

Brienne shrugged. “I should have known better- Ronnet Connington told me we were going to get the Death Eater who helped kill the Potters, and when I found out it was you…” She snorted. “I said it wasn’t very likely, but no one listens to me.”

“You’d think with how good you are, people would admit you know what you’re doing,” Rhaenys said, eyes closing.

“I keep trying to knock sense in them, but wizards have very hard heads,” Brienne agreed. “I suppose I just have to keep trying.”

“Why am I firing you?” Stannis shouted, causing Trys to jump. “Because you are a high handed fool who puts his own advancement in front of the truth, and you’ve caused far more damage than you’ve prevented! You followed Baelish’s intelligence without thinking, you set up those damn private courts for anyone who can’t bribe their way out of Azkaban-”

“I don’t take bribes,” Crouch said firmly.

“I know that, you’d be in Azkaban yourself if you were, but you aren’t doing any good, and you overreached this time,” Stannis met his gaze. “You would have let a spy walk away without a second thought because of your own blind avarice.”

“We’ve been losing this war because of you,” Crouch snarled.

“We won, now,” Jon Connington’s… nephew, Elia thought, pointed out. “You Know Who’s dead.”

“But the Death Eaters are all still out there,” Crouch pointed out.

“And we’ll lose half of them,” Stannis ground out. “Due to petty power grabs such as this one. If it’s done properly…”

Rhaenys had fallen back asleep, Elia noticed, or perhaps collapsed would be a better word for it. Sirius was hiding his face in her hair, short harsh sobs coming from him. Brienne was awkwardly sitting near the children, answering Little Elia’s questions.

She put up some privacy charms around the bed. Sirius should be able to grieve in private, she thought. For all of her family’s worry, Elia had relished that privilege, when Rhaegar died.

~

“Is Dumbledore really saying that neither of you should be raising Harry?” Arianne looked at her cousin and Sirius in amusement. “…Well, Tyene, I do love you dearly, but you do tend to leave dangerous materials lying about.”

“I’m apparently too immature to be raising a child,” Sirius said. “I did practically bait him into saying it, but Professor Martell heard it.”

“And Rhaenys pounced,” Tyene smiled at Rhaenys. “Pointing out that James and Lily were the same age- Sirius is actually a bit older than James, if I remember.”

“And then Dumbledore tried to bring up the miscarriage,” Rhaenys said, face a blank, pretty mask. “Suggesting it would be cruel to have me take on someone else’s child so soon.”

“I honestly thought you were about to hit him,” Sirius patted his wife- much like Sansa and Willas, there had been very little fanfare, with Elia, Aegon, and Remus as the only planned guests. (Arianne had come along anyway, and Remus had been charmingly sheepish about it all.) “Then he suggested that we would be unable to deal with any Death Eaters or supporters who want revenge and refuse to admit that Voldemort got beaten by Lily.”

Jaime Lannister, from Trys’ report of the conversation, had been right. People were toasting Harry Potter, the “Boy Who Lived”, without taking into consideration that Lily had been the one to set up the protection.

“ _Why_ does no one remember how bloody difficult it is to get into Dragonstone without my permission?” Rhaenys asked plaintively. Arianne gave a rueful look at the pretty orange glass vase near her cousin- the rare times Rhaenys exploded, something broke.

“Then he finally deigned to admit that Sarella’s guess was right- Lily’s plan had a side-effect tied to her bloodline, where Harry would have protection against Voldemort as long as he had a home with his relatives,” Tyene was glaring. “I picked up enough from Lily- her sister is horrible, from what she let slip over the years. I can’t see blood wards triggered by a loving sacrifice as being all that strong, or lasting against opponents who aren’t Voldemort. Or aren’t using a wand.”

Sirius nodded. “She hates magic- I think it might have been jealousy. Lily was, well, _Lily_ , and then adding magic to it? Imagine your little sister being that special, compared to you.”

Tyene nodded slowly. “I think you’re right, Black. And he thinks placing a magical infant there is a good idea.”

“Can we protest through the courts?” Rhaenys asked, then shook her head, loose twist starting to come undone. “No, stupid question, that cannot end well.”

“Exposing that Harry’s unprotected?” Arianne snorted. “He won’t last the week, if you do that. Dumbledore’s just counting on the lack of knowledge most wizards have about the muggle world and hoping it holds for ten years. I don’t know how well that will work out- a lot of the Death Eaters are more embittered than useless, right now, and they still have money.”

“And what about the embittered muggleborns?” Sansa Tyrell asked quietly from her position in the corner of the room. Tysha Crofter’s name went unsaid, but she’d left Tyrion- and Britain- a few days before Halloween, claiming that she couldn’t love him and live in that world anymore.

It had come uncomfortably close to the things Arianne’s mother had said, when she left after Quentyn went to Hogwarts. Her mother had been nonmagical, but the same sentiments were there.

“Mmm, some of them might want to have revenge on the world, just like a lot of the people left at loose ends because of the war.” Rhaenys agreed, remembering how very angry Tysha had been at everyone. “Still more worried about people like Malfoy walking around free. They can bind up in legalese what would get anyone else chucked in Azkaban for trying.”

“So we still have work left to do,” Arianne gave a stage smile that made Rhaenys shake her head and Sansa look at her with wide blue eyes.

“On to the next battle,” Sirius said, tone dark and unhappy.

“We’ll have to keep pushing,” Rhaenys said softly. “But we can do this- the law is on our side, and worst case scenario, we can get help. Remember, Arianne and I have a very large family with eclectic strengths.”

“So, goal one, get custody of Harry,” Sansa said firmly. “Goal two…”

“Neutralize as many of the political Death Eaters as possible,” Arianne smiled as wickedly as she could. “That will primarily be my job.”

“Goal three, change the laws, so Arianne, you take that third goal and I’ll see how many Potions Exchange connections we can use for goal two instead,” Rhaenys corrected. “Sansa, you can try and work out who we can use for what ends.”

Arianne pouted, and Tyene pulled out a sheet of parchment and one of Lily’s muggle pens, and they set out for their next great adventure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for sticking with me! Story title and the title for chapter one come from Anais Mitchell's Hadestown, and Chapter Six, "Where Night and Chaos Meet", gets the title from Pamela Dean's Tam Lin.


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